A BRIEF SURVEY OF ENGLISH AND 
AMERICAN LITERATURE 



•The, 




THE M ACM ILL AN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 



THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 



TORONTO 




The First Page of "Piers Plowman." 
Facsimile from the MS. in the Bodleian Library. 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF ENGLISH 
AND AMERICAN LITERATURE 



BY 

afT tis 



ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1916 

All rights reserved 



COPTEIGHT, 1918, 1916, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1916. 



* * * 

J. S. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 

JAN 27 1916 

© Jl. A 4 1 8 6 1 



PREFACE 

This book is intended especially to meet the needs of sec- 
ondary schools in which only a moderate amount of time is 
devoted to the history of literature, and where a brief survey 
of English and American literature in a single volume is re- 
quired. There has been a growing belief that the study about 
literature should be reduced to a minimum in order that as 
much time as possible might be given to the study of the 
literature itself. Much study about authors whose books the 
student has never read is of doubtful utility. A wiser plan 
is to use a brief account of the history of the literature with 
a large amount of reading in the literature itself arranged 
chronologically. To be sure, a certain amount of historical 
study is necessary. Students should be able to group the 
classics which they study in proper historical perspective and 
to see how these classics are the outgrowth of the life of the 
time in which they were written. For this purpose, however, 
no elaborate and detailed account of books which the student 
has never read is necessary. Such an elaborate study con- 
sumes an undue amount of time, confuses the student whose 
reading has been limited, and makes the study of literature 
uninspiring. The plan of the following book, therefore, is to 
give a very brief account of the progress of English and Amer- 
ican literature, to mention only the most important literary 
productions, to suggest very briefly their connection with the 
life of the period in which they were produced, and to point 
out in a general way their 'significance as pieces of literary 

v 



vi PREFACE 

art. Each chapter is accompanied with a list of suggested 
readings from the literature mentioned in the chapter. Em- 
phasis should be placed upon these readings and enough of 
them required to keep the study of the chapter from becoming 
a perfunctory learning of dry facts. The history should be 
carefully subordinated to the study of the literature itself. 

In the preparation of the chapters on the history of English 
literature, I have been particularly indebted to Moody and 
Lovett's History of English Literature. In the final chapter of 
Part II, which treats of the development of the short-story 
in America, my obligation to Canby's A Study of the Short- 
story in English is obvious. I am also indebted for many 
helpful suggestions to my colleagues, Professors H. M. Belden 
and A. H. E. Eairchild. 

F. M. T. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PART I 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Old English Period 1 

(a) The Early Literature of the Anglo-Saxons . . 1 

(6) The Traditional Literature of the Celts ... 5 

(c) Christian Literature ...... 6 

II. The Middle English Period 14 

(a) The Romance and the Ba]lad 14 

(b) The Age of Chaucer 25 

(c) The Rise of the Drama . . ' . . . .33 

III. The Renaissance ........ 41 

(a) Non-dramatic Literature 43 

(&) Dramatic Literature ...... 47 

IV. The Puritan Age . 62 

V. Classicism 73 

(a) The Drama .75 

(b) Non-dramatic Poetry 77 

(c) The Essay and the Pamphlet 81 

(d) The Novel 87 

(e) Criticism . .90 

VI. Romanticism 93 

(a) Poetry 93 

(b) Prose . . . . . . . .109 

VII. The Victorian Era 115 

(a) Realism 119 

(6) Idealism 125 

vii 



viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PART II 

CHAPTER PAG-K 

VIII. Early American Literature 153 

(a) History and Biography 154 

(b) Theological Writings 158 

(c) Poetry . . 159 

(d) Oratory and Political Prose 162 

IX. The First Creative Period 164 

(a) Romance 164 

(b) Poetry . . . . . . .170 

(c) Oratory . . . 176 

(d) Miscellaneous Prose . . . . . . 180 

X. The Second Creative Period 184 

(a) Poetry . . . ... . . . .184 

(b) Fiction . . .188 

(c) Oratory and Miscellaneous Prose .... 194 

XL The Development of the Short-Story . . . 197 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The First Page of " Piers Plowman." Facsimile from the Ms. in 
the Bodleian Library Frontispiece 

FACING- PAGE 

The Canterbury Pilgrims. After the fresco painting by William 

Blake . . .30 ^ 

Portia. After the painting by John Everett Millais . . 57 ^ 
Milton dictating " Paradise Lost." After the painting by Michael 

Munkacsy 69 

A Literary Party at Sir Joshua Reynolds'. After the painting by 

James Doyle 84 ^ 

Isabella and the Pot of Basil. After the painting by Holman 

Hunt ............ 108^ 

Thomas Car lyle. After the portrait by James McNeil Whistler . 117 

Cooper Monument, Cooperstown 167 

Ralph Waldo Emerson . . . r 181 / 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 198 ^ 



PART I 

A BRIEF SURVEY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER I 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 

(a) THE EARLY LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS 

The People. — For the beginnings of English literature we 
must go back to a time before our Anglo-Saxon forefathers 
came to England, when they were still living on the shores 
of the North Sea in Denmark and about the mouth of 
the Elbe River in northern Germany. They were Low- 
German tribes, allied more closely to the modern Dutch 
than to the modern Germans both by language and by blood. 
It is thought that they did not penetrate far into the swamps 
and forests of the interior, but lived along the shore and on 
the sea. They were uncivilized people, but not savages. 
Their literature shows — and we always go to literature to 
find out the inner life of a people — that they loved their 
homes, reverenced their women, felt the influences of Nature, 
believed in their gods, loved personal freedom, sought honor 
and glory. They were adventurous seafarers, stern of 
heart and strong of hand ; but they were not pirates. 

Their Gloomy Life. — Their life was gloomy. Denmark and 
Germany are lands of cloud and mist. During the entire 
year the sun can be seen only a third of the time that it is 
above the horizon. In winter, darkness comes in the middle 
of the afternoon. Moreover, the struggle with storm and sea 
was long and hard. No wonder this people was a stern and 
somber race, with a gloomy religion, and with melancholy 
ideas of life and fate. Life was almost without joy save 

1 



2 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



perhaps the joy of conflict ; and the whole of man's life, with 
whatever of joy it might have, was but the flicker of a candle 
between two great darknesses. The essential gloom of it 
was well expressed somewhat later in Northumbria by one 
of their own chiefs : 

"You remember, it may be, king, that which sometimes 
happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls 
and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without 
is rain and snow and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across 
the hall ; he enters by one door, and leaves by another. The brief 
moment while he is within is pleasant to him ; he feels not rain nor 
cheerless winter weather ; but the moment is brief — the bird flies 
away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. 
Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with 
the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while ; but what is the 
time which comes after — the time which was before ? We know 
not. If, then, this new doctrine [Christianity] may teach us some- 
what of greater certainty, it were well that we should regard it." 

Literature of Tradition. — Life, however, was not alto- 
gether without solace. In the long winter evenings the lord 
and his retainers gathered in the hall and sat around the 
mead bench, drinking together and. listening to the song of 
the scop and the gleeman. These poets and reciters kept 
alive the traditions of the people, interpreting their ideals 
in myth and legend and heroic story. This was their lit- 
erature ; not books, not even manuscripts. Stories of gods 
and heroes passed from generation to generation by word of 
mouth, even as the story of the wrath of Achilles was handed 
down among the prehistoric Greeks. Some of these stories 
are history ; most of them, myths about the struggle of the 
race with sea and storm and pestilence. 

When our forefathers came to England in the fifth century, 
they brought with them these traditions just as the pre- 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



3 



historic Greeks took their traditions to Asia Minor ; and just 
as the story of the siege of Troy developed in Asia Minor into 
The Iliad, so the Anglo-Saxon legends developed in England 
into an Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. 

" Beowulf." — The scene of the early part of this story is 
Denmark. Hrothgar, King of the Danes, had built a splendid 
mead hall by the sea, where he and his thanes gathered to 
feast and to listen to the songs of the gleemen. But a fright- 
ful monster, Grendel, came now and again and carried off 
the warriors to devour them in his lair. Arms could not 
prevail against him, and joy was turned to mourning in 
Hrothgar's Hall. At length from across the sea came the 
hero Beowulf to fight with the monster in the hall, and to 
pursue him wounded to the death to his lair beneath the 
waters of a sea pool. Here Beowulf also meets and destroys 
GrendePs mother. The hero then returns in great honor 
to his home in South Sweden, where he rules over his people 
for fifty years. In his old age, he destroys a fire dragon, and 
thereby secures for his people a great treasure-hoard ; but, in 
the battle, he loses his own life. A grateful people burn his 
body in pomp upon a funeral pyre and, upon a promontory 
overlooking the sea, erect a memorial barrow above his ashes. 
The end of the poem is too fine to pass over without quoting : 

"Then fashioned for him the folk of Geats 
firm on the earth a funeral-pile, 
and hung it with helmets and harness of war 
and breastplates bright, as the boon he asked ; 
and they laid amid it the mighty chieftain, 
heroes mourning their master dear. 
Then on the hill that hugest of balefires 
the warriors wakened. Wood-smoke rose 
black over blaze, and blent was the roar 
of flame with weeping (the wind was still), 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



till the fire had broken the frame of bones, 

hot at the heart. In heavy mood 

their misery moaned they, their master's death. 

Wailing her woe, the widow old, 

her hair upbound, for Beowulf's death 

sung in her sorrow, and said full oft 

she dreaded the doleful days to come, 

deaths enow, and doom of battle, 

and shame. — The smoke by the sky was devoured. 

"The folk of the Weders fashioned there 
on the headland a barrow broad and high, 
by ocean-farers far descried : 
in ten days' time their toil had raised it, 
the battle-brave's beacon. Round brands of the pyre 
a wall they built, the worthiest ever 
that wit could prompt in their wisest men. 
They placed in the barrow that precious booty, 
the rounds and the rings they had reft erewhile, 
hardy heroes, from hoard in cave, — 
trusting the ground with treasure of earls, 
gold in the earth, where ever it lies useless to men as of 
yore it was. 

" Then about that barrow the battle-keen rode 
atheling-born, a band of twelve, 
lament to make, to mourn their king, 
chant their dirge, and their chieftain honor. 
They praised his earlship, his acts of prowess 
worthily witnessed : and well it is 
that men their master-friend mightily laud, 
heartily love, when hence he goes 
from life in the body forlorn away. 

" Thus made their mourning the men of Geatland, 
for their hero's passing his hearth-companions : 
quoth that of all the kings of earth, 
of men he was the mildest and most belov'd, 
to his kin the kindest, keenest for praise." 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



5 



In this poem we see the scenes with which our forefathers 
were familiar, enter into their hopes and fears, and realize 
their passion for honor and glory, their high feeling of duty, 
and the stern heroism with which they took leave of life. 

Other poems which give us insight into Anglo-Saxon char- 
acter and life are Widsith, an account of the wanderings of 
a gleeman ; The Sea-farer, written in the spirit of Odysseus, 
though the northern seas differ much from the Mediter- 
ranean; and the Battle of Brunanburh and the Battle of 
Maldon, fine expressions of the warlike spirit of the race. 

(&) THE TRADITIONAL LITERATURE OF THE CELTS 

The Celts in Britain. — The people who inhabited Eng- 
land — or Britain as it was then called — before the Anglo- 
Saxon conquest, were Celts, that branch of the Indo-Euro- 
pean family of races which had overspread France, Spain, and 
the British Islands before the time of recorded history in 
western Europe. Caesar had fought against many of the 
Celtic tribes in Gaul, and in 55 B.C. had crossed over into 
Britain and defeated the British tribes there. Later Britain 
had become a Roman province, adopting to a certain extent 
the civilization of Rome. By the early part of the fifth 
century, however, the Roman legions had been withdrawn 
from Britain to protect the imperial city from the inroads of 
the Teutonic tribes of northern Europe, leaving the Celts 
of Britain to take care of themselves. They resisted the 
Anglo-Saxon invaders as best they could ; but they were 
little by little driven back into the mountains of Wales and 
Scotland, and some of them passed over into Armorica on 
the northwest coast of France. 

Literature of the Britons. — ■ These people, as well as the 
Anglo-Saxons, had their traditional literature of myth and 
legend and heroic story, which has had a large influence in 



6 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the development of English literature. These traditions 
clustered especially about the name of Arthur ; supposed to 
be a British prince who gathered the scattered bands of his 
people about him, and stemmed for a time the tide of Anglo- 
Saxon invasion, defeating the invaders in twelve great 
battles, of which the last was the famous battle of Mount 
Badon. The early form of these stories is not known to us. 
We have no mention of them until about the ninth century ; 
and, so far as we know, they did not find their way into 
manuscript until the eleventh or twelfth century, being trans- 
mitted from generation to generation by word of mouth 
like the story of the wrath of Achilles, and the story cf the 
exploits of Beowulf. They need not be discussed in this 
chapter, for, in the form in which they have come down to 
us, they belong to a time later than the Old English period. 
It is enough to say here that they reveal a people quite dif- 
ferent from the Anglo-Saxon; a less somber people, gayer 
and more fanciful, more eager, more excitable, more buoy- 
ant, more appreciative of beauty, richer in sentiment, more 
keenly sensitive to joy and sorrow ; but less steady, less perse- 
vering, less enduring, less likely to conquer, to achieve, and to 
prevail. 

(c) CHRISTIAN LITERATURE 

When the Anglo-Saxons conquered Britain, they were 
pagans, and they remained pagans for one hundred and fifty 
years. Then Christianity came. 

The Coming of Christianity. — One day in Rome in the 
latter half of the sixth century, a monk by the name of 
Gregory, seeing in the slave market at Rome two fair-haired 
slaves from Britain, asked to what race they belonged and 
was told that they were Angles. Thinking their faces more 
like Angels than Angles, he determined that this race should 
know Christianity; and later when he became Pope, sent 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



7 



St. Augustine to convert them. St. Augustine came to 
southern England at the very end of the sixth century, estab- 
lished monasteries and schools, and instituted Christian civil- 
ization. About the same time also monks came from Ire- 
and, which had long been a center of religion and learning, 
and established Irish (Celtic) monasteries in the north. 
These two streams of Christian influence brought to the 
English new thoughts and feelings, new ideas about life, and 
before long produced a literature different in many ways from 
the traditional pagan literature of the earlier Anglo-Saxons. 

Caedmon. — The first Christian literature grew up in the 
north during the seventh century. One of the most impor- 
tant of the northern monasteries was at Whitby on the 
eastern coast, northeast of the city of York (see map). 
Here lived Caedmon, a poor ignorant man, who, if the 
legend about him is true, was miraculously led to the writing 
of poetry. Bede, who was born about the time of the death of 
Caedmon, tells the story in his Ecclesiastical History. 

" There was in the monastery of this abbess a certain brother es- 
pecially distinguished by the grace of God, since he was wont to 
make poems breathing of piety and religion. Whatever he learned 
of Sacred Scripture by the mouth of interpreters, he in a little time 
gave forth in poetical language composed with the greatest sweetness 
and depth of feeling, in English, his native tongue ; and the effect of 
his poems was ever and anon to incite the souls of many to despise 
the world and long for the heavenly life. Not but that there were 
others after him among the people of the Angles who sought to com- 
pose religious poetry; but none there was who could equal him. 
He (Caedmon) did not learn the art of song from men, nor through 
the means of any man ; rather did he receive it as a free gift from 
God. Hence it came to pass that he never was able to compose 
poetry of a frivolous or idle sort ; none but such as pertain to 
religion suited a tongue so religious as his. Living always the life 
of a layman until well advanced in years, he had never learned 



8 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the least thing about poetry. In fact, so little did he understand 
of it that when at a feast it would be ruled that every one present 
should, for the entertainment of the others, sing in turn, he would, 
as soon as he saw the harp coming anywhere near him, jump up 
from the table in the midst of the banqueting, leave the place, and 
make the best of his way home. 

" This he had done at a certain time, and leaving the house where 
the feast was in progress, had gone out to the stable where the care of 
the cattle had been assigned to him for that night. There, when it 
was time to go to sleep, he had lain down for that purpose. But 
while he slept some one stood by him in a dream, greeted him, called 
him by name, and said, ' Casdmon, sing me something/ To this 
he replied, 'X know not how to sing, and that is the very reason 
why I left a feast and came here, because I could not sing/ But 
the one who was talking with him answered, 'No matter, you are 
to sing for me/ 'Well, then/ said he, 'what is it that I must sing V 
'Sing/ said the other, 'the beginning of created things/ At this 
reply he immediately began to sing verses in praise of God the 
Creator, verses that he had never heard, and whose meaning is as 
follows : 'Now should we praise the Keeper of the heavenly king- 
dom, the might of the Creator and His counsel, the works of the 
Father of glory ; how He, though God eternal, became the author 
of all marvels. He, the almighty Guardian of mankind, first created 
for the sons of men heaven as a roof, and afterwards the earth/ 
This is the meaning, but not the precise order, of the words which 
he sang in his sleep ; for no songs, however well they may be com- 
posed, can be rendered from one language into another without 
loss of grace and dignity. When he rose from sleep, he remembered 
all that he had sung while in that state, and shortly after added, in 
the same strain, many more words of a hymn befitting the majesty 
of God. 

" In the morning he went to the steward who was set over him, 
and showed him what gift he had acquired. Being led to the 
abbess, he was bidden to make known his dream and repeat his poem 
to the many learned men who were present, that they all might 
give their judgment concerning the thing which he related, and 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



9 



whence it was; and they were unanimously of the opinion that 
heavenly grace had been bestowed upon him by the Lord. They 
then set about expounding to him a piece of sacred history or teach- 
ing, bidding him, if he could, to turn it into the rhythm of poetry. 
This he undertook to do, and departed. In the morning he returned 
and delivered the passage assigned to him, converted into an ex- 
cellent poem. The abbess, honoring the grace of God as displayed 
in the man, shortly afterward instructed him to forsake the condi- 
tion of a layman and take upon himself the vows of a monk. She 
thereupon received him into the monastery with his whole family, 
and made him one of the company of the brethren, commanding that 
he should be taught the whole course and succession of Biblical 
history. He, in turn, calling to mind what he was able to learn by 
the hearing of the ear, and, as it were, like a clean animal, chewing 
upon it as a cud, transformed it all into most agreeable poetry; 
and, by echoing it back in a more harmonius form, made his teachers 
in turn listen to him. Thus he rehearsed the creation of the world, 
the origin of man, and all the story of Genesis; the departure of 
Israel from Egypt and their entry into the Promised Land, together 
with many other histories from Holy Writ ; the incarnation of our 
Lord, his passion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven; the 
coming of the Holy Ghost and the teaching of the Apostles ; more- 
over, he made many poems about the terror of the future judgment, 
the awfulness of the pains of hell, and the joy of the heavenly king- 
dom, besides a great number about the mercies and judgments of 
God. In all these he exerted himself to allure men from the love 
of wickedness, and to impel them to the love and practice of right- 
eous living ; for he was a very devout man, humbly submissive to 
the monastic rule, but full of consuming zeal against those who were 
disposed to act otherwise. 

" Hence it came to pass that he ended his life with a fair death. 
For when the hour of his departure drew nigh, he was afflicted for 
the space of a fortnight with a bodily weakness which seemed to 
prepare the way; yet it was so far from severe that he was able 
during the whole of that time to walk about and converse. Near 
at hand there was a cottage, to which those who were sick and 



10 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



appeared nigh unto death were usually taken. At the approach of 
evening on the same night when he was to leave the world, he 
desired his attendant to make ready a place there for him to take 
his rest . The attendant did so, though he could not help wondering 
at the request, since he did not seem the least like a person about to 
die. When he was placed in the infirmary, he was somehow full of 
good humor, and kept talking and joking with those who had 
already been brought there. Some time after midnight he asked 
whether they had the Eucharist at hand. 'What do you need of 
the Eucharist ?' they answered, 'you aren't going to die yet, for you 
are just as full of fun in talking with us as if nothing were the matter 
with you/ 'Never mind/ said he, 'bring me the Eucharist.' 
Taking it in his hand, he asked, 'Are you all at peace with me, and 
free from any grudge or ill will?' 'Yes/ they all responded, 'we 
are perfectly at peace with you, and cherish no grievance whatever.' 
'But are you/ said they, 'entirely at peace with us?' 'Yes, my 
dear children/ he answered without hesitation, 'I am at peace with 
all the servants of God.' And thus saying, he made ready for his 
entrance into the other life by partaking of the heavenly journey- 
bread. Not long after he inquired, 'How near is it to the hour 
when the brethren are wakened for lauds?' 'But a little while/ 
was the reply. 'Well then,' said he, 'let us wait for that hour/ and, 
making over himself the sign of the cross, he laid his head on the 
pillow, and falling into a light slumber, ended his life in silence. 
And so it came to pass that, as he had served the Lord in 
simplicity and purity of mind, and with serene attachment and 
loyalty, so by a serene death he left the world, and went to 
look upon His face. And meet in truth it was that the 
tongue which had indited so many helpful words in praise 
of the Creator, should frame its very last words in His praise, 
while in the act of signing himself with the cross and of commend- 
ing his spirit into His hands. And that he foresaw his death is 
apparent from what has here been related." 1 

The long epic poem which has come down to us associated 

1 Cook and Tinker, Translations from Old English Poetry, pp. 180-183. 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



11 



with the name of Csedmon consists of a paraphrase of 
Genesis, Exodus, and a part of Daniel. It was not, however, 
all written by Csedmon; and no one knows exactly what 
parts are his. The tone is almost as much pagan as Chris- 
tian. Armies and battles are described with enthusiasm. 
The destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea is sung with 
savage zest. The poem represents a civilization nominally 
Christian, but still permeated with pagan thought and 
feeling. 

Cynewulf was another important poet who wrote in Anglo- 
Saxon. Almost nothing is known of his life. We are not 
sure how many of the poems attributed to him were really 
written by him ; but some of them certainly were, since he 
worked his name into the text in a kind of cipher, using runes 
for the purpose. 1 

"Elene" and " Christ. " — The most important of Cyne- 
wulf s undoubted poems are Elene and Christ. Elene re- 
lates how Constantine, on the eve of battle, had a vision of 
the cross, and afterwards sent his mother, Elene, to search 
for the original cross in Jerusalem. The Christ tells the story 
of the nativity of Christ, his ascension, and the last judgment. 
Like most of the medieval writers and painters, Cynewulf 
loved to depict the tortures of the wicked and the joys of 
the redeemed. The Christ, however, is prevailingly didactic, 
though rising at times to the level of genuine reflective poetry. 
The following is a typical passage. It compares life to a 
journey on the sea. 

"Now His most like as if we fare in ships 
On the ocean's flood, over the water cold, 
Driving our vessels through the spacious seas 
With horses of the deep. A perilous way is this 
Of boundless waves, and there are stormy seas 

1 See Cook and Tinker, Translations from Old English Poetry, p. 83 f. 



12 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



On which we toss here in this (reeling) world 
O'er the deep paths. Ours was a sorry plight 
Until at last we sailed unto the land, 
Over the troubled main, Help came to us 
That brought us to the haven of salvation, 
God's Spirit-Son, and granted grace to us 
That we might know e'en from the vessel's deck 
Where we must bind with anchorage secure 
Our ocean steeds, our stallions of the waves." 

Bede's " Ecclesiastical History." — Another writer from 
the north of England was the Venerable Bede, who lived at 
Jarrow near the mouth of the Tyne. (See map.) He was a 
scholar, considering the time in which he lived; and al- 
though he made many mistakes, we owe to him most of our 
knowledge of English history from the landing of Csesar 
down to the year 731. His principal work is The Ecclesi- 
astical History of the English People, written in Latin, as 
most of his other works were. He is said to have made 
an Anglo-Saxon translation of the Gospel of St. John, but the 
manuscript is unfortunately lost. His account of Csedmon 
shows his interesting style. 

The Coming of the Danes. — Near the end of the eighth 
century the Danes from the Baltic began to make inroads into 
northern England ; and by the middle of the ninth century 
the learning and civilization of Northumbria had been prac- 
tically swept away. Monasteries were demolished, teachers 
and scholars slain, and libraries utterly destroyed. The 
Northumbrian literature is preserved only in West Saxon 
transcripts, made, probably, at the court of King Alfred the 
Great (848-901). 

Alfred the Great, who succeeded for a time in checking 
the Danes in their progress to the south, maintained at his 
court in Wessex a center of literature and scholarship. He 



THE OLD ENGLISH PERIOD 



13 



gathered learned men about him, established a court school, 
and caused many foreign manuscripts to be translated into 
Anglo-Saxon. He was himself a scholar and a translator. 
He gave to his people Anglo-Saxon versions of a manual of 
history and geography by Orosius, the Consolations of Phi- 
losophy by Boethius, and the Pastoral Care by Gregory. He 
translated Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and, above all, 
developed the famous Saxon Chronicle, the earliest history 
of England in the language of the people. Extracts from 
the Chronicle are accessible in Manly's English Prose, and in 
Cook and Tinker's Translations from Old English Prose. 
Much of it, especially the account of Alfred's own reign, is 
literature as well as history. Alfred has fittingly been called 
the father of English prose. 

After the death of Alfred (901 a.d.) literature declined. 
There was no national life, and consequently no national 
literature. Monks in the monasteries wrote homilies, and 
the Saxon Chronicle was continued ; but the Anglo-Saxons 
had produced the best that was in them, and were in need of 
new blood and a new national impulse. These came with 
the Norman Conquest in 1066. 

Readings in Anglo-Saxon Literature 

1. Beowulf: Translated by Gummere (The Macmillan Com- 
pany), and by Child in the Riverside Literature Series (Houghton, 
Mifflin, and Company). 

2. Miscellaneous selections translated by Cook and Tinker in 
Translations from Old English Poetry and Old English Prose (Ginn 
and Company). 



CHAPTER II 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 

(a) THE ROMANCE AND THE BALLAD 

The Norman Invasion. — In 1066 William of Normandy 
invaded England, won the battle of Hastings against Harold, 
the last of the Saxon kings, and set up in England a Norman 
kingdom. The Normans, as their name suggests, came 
originally from the north, and were allied by blood to the 
Danes who had devastated Northumbria and destroyed the 
Saxon civilization there. The Normans had settled in 
Northern France, had intermarried with the French, and 
had adopted the French language and many of the French 
customs and ideas of life. The result was a race which pos- 
sessed the vigor and perseverance of the Teutons, and also 
the gayety, imagination, and sensitiveness of the French. It 
was well that such a race should come into England. 

The Blending of the Races. — For many years the Normans 
and Saxons lived side by side in England as conquerors and 
conquered without much intermingling; but gradually the 
same thing happened which had happened when the Normans 
settled in France. The two races united. Norman and 
Saxon were merged to form the Englishman. The influence 
of the Celt and the Dane was not insignificant, but the com- 
posite Englishman was prevailingly Saxon and Norman. Sir 
Walter Scott's Ivanhoe presents a picture of English life dur- 
ing the three centuries after the conquest, when the races 
were distinct and the language in hopeless confusion. Scott 

14 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



15 



has brought together, in the reign of Richard the Lion- 
hearted, race antagonism which belonged to a century pre- 
vious, and ideas of chivalry which belonged to a century 
or two later, so that his history is not accurate as a pic- 
ture of the time of Richard ; but, if we wish to think of 
the three centuries together, Ivanhoe gives us a fairly ade- 
quate idea of life in this period of transition. That life is 
reflected also in the Middle English literature, especially 
in the romances and ballads which furnished the most impor- 
tant literature between the Norman Conquest and the time 
of Chaucer. 

Beginning of Modern English. — Although the hostility 
between the races soon died out, it was longer before the 
languages blended into modern English. There were three 
languages in England immediately after the conquest : 
Latin, the language of learning; French, the language of 
the court and of polite society ; and Saxon, the language of 
the common people. Moreover, there were three dialects of 
Saxon: the Northumbrian, the Midland, and the Southern, 
about as different as the Scotch of Burns and the English of 
Addison. It was not until the time of Chaucer (fourteenth 
century) that the Midland dialect finally triumphed and 
became the basis of modern English, absorbing many north- 
ern and southern forms, and adding to its vocabulary a 
large number of Norman-French words. 1 

(1) Romances 

Arthurian Romance. — The Normans brought a new element 
into English literature. Preeminently interested in chivalry 
and romance, they possessed many stories of knightly prowess 
and romantic adventure, brilliant in description, extrava- 
gant in action, abounding in superstition. Among these 

1 Cf. Ivanhoe, Chapter I, for the relation of Norman-French and Saxon. 



16 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



were stories of King Arthur and his knights. It will be 
remembered (see p. 5) that when the Britons were driven 
back into the fastnesses of Wales and the North, many of 
them passed over into Brittany in France, carrying with 
them traditions of their famous prince. These stories were 
developed in Brittany as well as in England by the addition 
of much popular folk-lore, myth, and legend, were further 
enlarged by the French, and, in the end, became popular 
all over Europe, extending even into Germany and Italy. 
Some of the earliest and best of the Arthur stories are in 
Norman-French. When the Normans came to England, the 
continental stream and the native Welsh stream of the 
Arthurian story came together and produced a variety of 
literature in 'Latin, French, and English. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. — The first important 
book to treat the Arthurian stories was Geoffrey of Mon- 
mouth's History of the Kings of Britain, written in Latin 
about the middle of the twelfth century. Geoffrey pre- 
tended that his book w r as sober history, but he seems to have 
cared little for historic facts. Indeed he has been called 
" the champion liar of the twelfth century. " His book is 
full of events which never could have happened — pure ro- 
mance. He was in a position to know both Welsh and Breton 
traditions, for he belonged to a Welsh monastery which had 
intimate connections with the Bretons on the continent. 
The truth seems to be that he brought together the two 
masses of tradition and foisted them upon the public as gen- 
uine history. To be sure, he claimed to be translating an 
old manuscript, but no trace of such a manuscript has ever 
been found. It was the fashion to have a source upon which 
to base a book, so Geoffrey simply invented a book for the 
purpose. Although, then, Geoffrey's book was not written 
in the form of a romance, it is genuine romance material 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



17 



and the real progenitor of the great mass of subsequent 
Arthurian literature, including Malory's Movie d' Arthur 
and Tennyson's Idylls of the King, 

Layamon' s " Brut." — Geoffrey's book was immediately 
translated into French by Wace of Jersey, who added much 
from oral tradition which Geoffrey seems not to have known. 
Wace's book, in turn, was translated into English and much 
enlarged about the year 1200 by a monk named Layamon. 
Layamon called his book Brut. It tells of the founding of 
the British nation by Brutus, a great grandson of iEneas, 
and then traces the course of British history down to the 
author's own time. Nearly a third of the book is taken up 
with the achievements of Arthur and his knights. Laya- 
mon was not content merely to translate Wace and Geoffrey 
and Bede, his acknowledged authorities ; he himself lived on 
the Severn River close to the Welsh border, where he could 
not fail to become familiar with Celtic tradition; and this 
tradition he did not scruple to use. He adds, for instance, 
the story of the founding of the Round Table and the ac- 
count of the fays who attended Arthur's birth and, after his 
last battle, carried him to Avalon to be healed of his wounds. 

The Language of Layamon. — Layamon's book is also 
important because it was the first romance written for 
Englishmen in the English language. After the Norman 
Conquest, the English vernacular had ceased to be a liter- 
ary tongue. Books were all written in Latin or French, 
except the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was continued 
down to the year 1154. Layamon favored the popular 
language and employed it again for literary purposes. It 
had become much changed, however, in the century and a 
half since the conquest, resembling more the English of 
Chaucer than the English of Alfred and Csedmon. 

The Holy Grail. — During the three centuries following 



18 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the Norman Conquest Arthurian romance was in a highly 
flourishing condition. At the beginning, the stories were 
purely pagan, but they early took on religious aspects, as 
the story of the Holy Grail so interestingly shows. This 
story is thought by some to have been originally a pagan 
myth about vegetation, a sacrifice to propitiate the god of 
fertility and growth, and thus to bring in the summer of joy 
and fruitfulness after the sadness and death of winter. 
Later the sacrificial vessel seems to have become confused 
with the cup from which Jesus drank at the last supper, and 
the sacrificial spear to have become the spear of Longinus, 
which pierced the side of Christ on the cross. The grail 
thus became Christian, representing the medieval idea of 
purity, and visible only to the pure in heart and the righteous. , 
" G a way n e and the Green Knight. " — Of the many romances 
which appeared in English during the thirteenth and four- 
teenth centuries the best, by almost universal consent, is 
Gawayne and the Green Knight. The following is the sub- 
stance of the story: 

"On New Year's day, while Arthur and his knights are keeping 
the Yuletide feast at Camelot, a gigantic knight in green enters 
the banquet hall on horseback and challenges the bravest knight 
to present an exchange of blows ; that is, he will expose his neck to 
a blow of his own big battle-ax, if any knight will agree to abide a 
blow in return. After some natural consternation and a fine speech 
by Arthur, Gawain accepts the challenge, takes the battle-ax, and 
with one blow sends the giant's head rolling through the hall. The 
Green Knight, who is evidently a terrible magician, picks up his 
head and mounts his horse. He holds out his head and the ghastly 
lips speak, warning Gawain to be faithful to his promise and to 
seek through the world till he finds the Green Chapel. There, on 
next New Year's day, the Green Knight will meet him and return 
the blow. 

"The second canto of the poem describes Gawain's long journey 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



19 



through the wilderness on his steed Gringolet, and his adven- 
tures with storm and cold, with wild beasts and monsters, as he 
seeks in vain for the Green Chapel. On Christmas eve, in the midst 
of a vast forest, he offers a prayer to ' Mary, mildest mother so dear, 1 
and is rewarded by sight of a green castle. He enters and is royally 
entertained by the host, an aged hero, and by his wife, who is the 
most beautiful woman the knight ever beheld. Gawain learns 
that he is at last near the Green Chapel, and settles down for a 
little comfort after his long quest. 

" The next canto shows the life in the castle, and describes a 
curious compact between the host, who goes hunting daily, and the 
knight, who remains in the castle to entertain the young wife. 
The compact is, that at night each man shall give the other whatever 
good thing he obtains during the day. While the host is hunting, 
the young woman tries in vain to induce Gawain to make love to her, 
and ends by giving him a kiss. When the host returns and gives 
his guest the game he has killed, Gawain returns the kiss. On the 
third day, her temptations having twice failed, the lady offers 
Gawain a ring, which he refuses ; but when she offers a magic green 
girdle that will preserve the wearer from death, Gawain, who re- 
members the giant's ax so soon to fall on his neck, accepts the girdle 
as a ' jewel for the jeopardy' and promises the lady to keep the gift 
secret. Here, then, are two conflicting compacts. When the host 
returns and offers his game, Gawain returns the kiss, but says nothing 
of the green girdle. 

"The last canto brings our knight to the Green Chapel, after he 
is repeatedly warned to turn back in the face of certain death. The 
Chapel is a terrible place in the midst of desolation ; and as Gawain 
approaches he hears a terrifying sound, the grating of steel on stone, 
where the giant is sharpening a new battle-ax. The Green Knight 
appears, and Gawain, true to his compact, offers his neck for the 
blow. Twice the ax swings harmlessly; the third time it falls on 
his shoulder and wounds him. Whereupon Gawain jumps for 
his armor, draws his sword, and warns the giant that the compact 
calls for only one blow, and that, if another is offered, he will de- 
fend himself. 



20 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



"Then the Green Knight explains things. He is lord of the 
castle where Gawain has been entertained for days past. The 
first two swings of the ax were harmless, because Gawain had been 
true to his compact and twice returned the kiss. The last blow 
had wounded him, because he concealed the gift of the green girdle, 
which belongs to the Green Knight and was woven by his wife. 
Moreover, the whole thing has been arranged by Morgain the fay- 
woman (an enemy of Queen Guinevere, who appears often in the 
Arthurian romances). Full of shame, Gawain throws back the gift 
and is ready to atone for his deception ; but the Green Knight thinks 
he has already atoned, and presents the green girdle as a free gift. 
Gawain returns to Arthur's court, tells the whole story frankly, and 
ever after that the knights of the Round Table wear a green girdle 
in his honor." 1 

The Arthurian Romances as a whole did not reach their 
best form until near the end of the fifteenth century. At 
that time Thomas Malory, an English knight, selected all 
that was best in the old English and French romances, and 
retold it in quaint and charming English prose. His book, 
Morte d } Arthur, is the original of most of the modern ver- 
sions of the Arthur stories. It has inspired the great writers 
of England in nearly every generation since its appearance. 
There are many references to the stories in Shakespeare. 
Spenser made Arthur the connecting link between the parts 
of The Faerie Queene. Milton considered long whether he 
should not make the Arthurian material, instead of the fall 
of man, the subject of his great epic. In the nineteenth 
century Arnold, Tennyson, Morris, and Swinburne all wrote 
Arthurian stories. Perhaps no other literary material has 
played so large a part in English literature as these old 
romances. 

There were other famous cycles of Romance, notably the 



1 Long, English Literature, pp. 57-58. 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 21 



stories of Troy, the stories of Alexander, and the stories of 
Charlemagne, but none of them are so important in English 
literature as the native stories about Arthur. 

(2) Ballads 

Ballad Literature. — The romances of chivalry, although 
based upon popular tradition, were, for the most part, put 
into literary form by the Normans, and really represent the 
courtly class. The common people had a popular literature 
all their own. They composed and sang the traditional 
ballads, passing them on from generation to generation by 
word of mouth. The origin of ballad making is far back in 
the primitive period of civilization, when the unity of tribe 
or nation was strong, and before the people had become di- 
vided into educated and uneducated classes. When these 
rude people met upon the green for game and dance and song, 
a leader would begin to chant a bit of heroic story, some 
achievement, perhaps, of a member of the tribe. Imme- 
diately the entire company would take it up, developing the 
story in song, and acting out the events in dramatic dance. 
In a certain sense the ballad was the production of the throng 
rather than of an individual artist. No one claimed the 
authorship. It represented the ideas of no particular indi- 
vidual. It was altogether spontaneous, objective, direct, 
— a pure story in its simplest form, without any marks of 
reflection and learning. The ballad was sung by everybody, 
changed at will, and transmitted to the next generation by 
word of mouth. Eventually it either passed out of remem- 
brance or was caught by some maker of books and written 
down. 

Robin Hood. — This " merry art of ballad making " 
in the old traditional manner is practically extinct, though 
it is said that the old English ballads survive by tradition 



22 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



among the southern mountaineers, and ballads of a similar 
nature have been collected among the cowboys of the fron- 
tier. (See Lomax, John A : Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier 
Ballads.) In the years following the Norman Conquest, 
however, the custom was in vigorous survival in England. 
The most important ballads have to do with the story of 
Robin Hood, of which Sir Walter Scott made much use in 
Ivanhoe. Robin Hood is an idealized outlaw ; a hero of the 
common people, brave and honest, hating all forms of 
injustice ; an enemy of the rich and powerful ; a friend of the 
poor, and particularly of unfortunate knights. He em- 
bodies the protest against the oppression of church and 
state. 

A Gest of Robin Hode is one of the oldest as well as one of 
the best of the Robin Hood ballads. " The whole poem," 
says Professor Child, " may have been put together as early 
as 1400 or before." It is, however, based on still older 
ballads. There are at least three distinct episodes : Robin's 
experiences with the Knight, with the Sheriff, and with the 
King. Perhaps these were originally separate ballads. 
The story is very simple and direct, almost bald. Just the 
necessary facts are told, nothing more. The story moves, 
too, with great rapidity. When, for instance, the king has 
come to the forest in disguise and has defeated Robin in an 
archery contest, in which the penalty of defeat is a blow 
from the victor, we have the following simple scene : 

"Then bespake good Gylberte, 
And thus he gan say ; 
'Mayster/ he sayd, 'your takyll is lost, 
Stande forth and take your pay/ 

" 'If it be so/ say'd Robyn, 
'That may no better be, 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 23 



Syr Abbot, I delyver the myn arowe, 
I pray the, syr, serve thou me/ 

" 'It falleth not for myn ordre/ sayd our kynge, 
' Robyn, by thy leve, 
For to smyte no good yeman, 
For doute I sholde hym greve.' 

" 'Smyte on boldely/ sayd Robyn, 
'I give the large leve : ' 
Anone our kynge, with that worde, 
He folde up his sieve, 

And sych a buffet he gave Robyn, 

To grounde he yede full nere : 
'I make myn avowe to God/ sayd Robyn, 

'Thou arte a stalworthe frere. 

" 'There is pith in thyn arme/ sayd Robyn, 
' I trowe thou canst well shete ' ; 
Thus our kynge and Robin Hode. 
Togeder gan they mete." 

Another famous ballad, somewhat later in date, is Chevy- 
Chace, a story of a hunt on the Scottish border ending in a 
clash of arms between the famous nobles Percy and Douglas. 
Another is Tarn Lin, a supernatural ballad of transformation, 
in subject matter not unlike the " Ballad of Alice Brand " 
in The Lady of the Lake, but of course composed in a more 
primitive and, therefore, more genuinely ballad style. 

" Sir Patrick Spence." — Of all the ballads which have come 
down to us, however, none perhaps surpasses the strong and 
graphic ballad of Sir Patrick Spence. It is short enough for 
reproduction here. 

1. " The king sits in Dumferling toune, 
Drinking the blude-reid wine : 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



1 whar will I get guid sailor, 
To sail this schip of mine ? ' 

' Up and spak an eldern knicht, 

Sat at the kings richt kne : 
i Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor, 
That sails upon the se/ 

The king has written a braid letter, 

And signed it wi his hand, 
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, 

Was walking on the sand. 

The first fine that Sir Patrick red, 

A loud lauch lauched he ; 
The next fine that Sir Patrick red, 

The teir blinded his ee. 

' wha is this has don this deid, 

This ill deid don to me, 
To send me out this time o' the yeir, 

To sail upon the se! 

' Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all, 
Our guid schip sails the morne : ' 

'0 say no sae, my master deir, 
For I feir a deadlie storme. 

' Late late yestreen I saw the new moone, 
Wi the auld moone in hir arme, 

And I feir, I feir, my deir master, 
That we will cum to harme.' 

our Scots nobles wer richt laith 
To weet their cork-heild schoone ; 

Bot lang owre a 7 the play wer playd, 
Thair hats they swam aboone. 

lang, lang may their ladies sit, 
Wi thair fans into their hand, 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



25 



Or eir they se Sir Patrick Spence 
Cum sailing to the land. 

10. " lang, lang may the ladies stand, 

Wi thair gold kerns in their hair, 
Waiting for thair ain deir lords, 
For they'll se thame na mair. 

11. " Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour, 

It's fiftie fadom deip, 
And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence, 
Wi the Scots lords at his feit." 

Here is story reduced to its lowest terms. There is noth- 
ing superfluous, for only the most significant facts are told. 
Much must be read between the lines, yet to read between 
the lines is easy, and the facts are unusually direct and 
graphic. 

Outside of ballads and romances, little need be said of the 
literature between the Norman Conquest and the time of 
Chaucer. Two productions only are of special interest. The 
Pearl and Ancren Riwle. The Pearl is an intensely human 
picture of a father's grief over the loss of his little daughter ; 
the Ancren Riwle, advice for the guidance of anchoresses, 
is one of the most beautiful pieces of early English prose. 
For further information on these and other productions of the 
period, the reader is referred to the standard histories of 
literature. 

(&) THE AGE OF CHAUCER 

The Rise of the People. — The fourteenth century is re- 
markable for the rising importance of the common people. 
The Hundred Years War between France and England, 
which broke out early in the century, not only loosened the 
Normans' political ties with France, but also emphasized 
their dependence upon the English peasantry. These peas- 



26 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



ants made valuable soldiers. The success of Edward III 
and the Black Prince was largely due, not to knights in 
armor, but to English yeomen, who fought with the bow. 
Moreover, the scourge of the Black Death destroyed half 
of the people of the country, and so made labor rare and 
valuable. The common man began to realize his importance 
in the state, and to demand a larger freedom and clearer 
rights and privileges. In 1381 under the leadership of Wat 
Tyler, Jack Straw, and John Balle, the peasants marched to 
London, took possession of the city, and made their demands 
upon King Richard II. Their express demands were not 
granted, but they had demonstrated their power, and had 
become conscious of their wrongs and needs. The masses 
of the English people were beginning to think, and hence- 
forth had to be reckoned with. 

Langland' s " Vision of Piers Plowman." — One of the most 
important literary figures connected with the awakening of 
the common people was William Langland (1332-1400), 
who wrote The Vision of Piers Plowman. In this dream, 
Langland brings together in an open field a crowd of people 
representing all classes of English society; the plowman, 
the laborer j the tradesman, the lawyer, the minstrel, the 
friar, the pardoner, the knight. The central figure is Lady 
Bribery, expressing the corrupt social life of the time. Lang- 
land's sympathies are distinctly with those who are made 
to labor that others may enjoy the fruit of their labors. 
One entire division of the poem is a plea for the dignity and 
worth of toil. The Seven Deadly Sins come to Piers to have 
him lead them on the way to Truth, but he refuses to go 
until his field has been plowed. They all set to work on the 
field and thereby secure their salvation, for, as they work, 
pardon comes to them for their sins. Another division shows 
the religious awakening of the time. Its subject is " The 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 27 



Search for Dowel, Dobet, Dobest." He who does well is 
moral and upright ; he who does better is also loving and 
kind ; he does best who lives after the model of Christ. 
Indeed, Piers in a way represents Christ, and appears in the 
poem under a halo of light. 

John Wyclif . — A still more influential leader of the 
people was John Wyclif (1323-1384), whose greatest service 
was his translation of the Bible into English. This Bible 
profoundly affected the life of the English people in spite of 
the fact that it had to be circulated entirely in manuscript, 
and for that reason could not be universally read. It was, 
moreover, the first influential piece of real literary English 
prose, with the possible exception of Sir John Mandeville's 
Travels. Its influence both on English prose and on the 
lives of the English people can hardly be overestimated. 
Wyclif also organized the famous Lollard movement for the 
purification of religion, modifying many of the ideas of the 
Roman church. Influential friends protected him from per- 
secution during his lifetime, but some years after his death 
his bones were dug up and burned, and his ashes thrown into 
the river Swift. 

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), however, was by far the 
greatest literary figure of the time. He was not a reformer 
in the sense that Langland and Wyclif were. He made no 
war upon society. He made no war against the church. He 
was, however, a very penetrating critic of life and the prince 
of story-tellers. The entire life of the time is reflected in his 
poetry. . He knew the court ; he knew the common people ; 
and he has given us a very graphic picture of the virtues and 
follies of both. His poems, especially The Canterbury Tales, 
are full of the most delightful satire on all classes. 

Period of French Influence. — His literary life naturally 
divides itself into three periods. Until he was thirty years 



28 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



old, he was a student of French life and literature. Under 
the French influence, he wrote in English verse a long trans- 
lation of the famous French poem, The Romaunt of the Rose, 
an allegory about love. The winning of a lady's favor is 
represented by the effort to secure a rose which blooms in a 
mystic garden. Some of the characters in the action are 
Love, Hate, Envy, Jealousy, Idleness, Sweet Looks. The 
Death of Blanche the Duchesse also belongs to this period. 
It was written after the death of Blanche, wife of Chaucer's 
patron, John of Gaunt, to solace the bereavement of her hus- 
band. 

The Italian Period. — In 1370 Chaucer was sent abroad by 
the government on the first of those diplomatic missions upon 
which he was to be engaged for the next fifteen years. He 
visited Italy and soon came under the influence of the great 
Italian writers. The period, therefore, from 1370 to 1386 
has been called the Italian period of Chaucer's life. To this 
period belong Troilus and Criseyde, The House of Fame, and 
The Legend of Good Women. 

" The Legend of Good Women." — The prologue to The 
Legend of Good Women relates that on Chaucer's return one 
evening from a walk in the fields he fell asleep in his garden 
and dreamed that he saw coming toward him across the 
meadow the God of Love, suncrowned and radiant faced, 
leading by the hand the royal Alcestis. The God of Love 
chides Chaucer for writing books of false and fickle love such 
as The Romaunt of the Rose and Troilus and Criseyde, when 
he might be writing of the virtue and faithfulness of women. 
Alcestis pleads in his behalf, and secures for him the penance 
of writing a series of stories in praise of good women. Then 
follow nine stories celebrating, among others, Cleopatra, 
Dido, Thisbe, Lucretia, Ariadne, and Medea. 

The House of Fame is also a dream. Chaucer finds him- 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



29 



self in a temple of glass sacred to Venus. The place is full 
of beautiful statues, one, in particular, being a statue of 
Venus herself, floating in a lake. The chief interest of the 
poet, however, is in a brass tablet upon which he reads the 
story of The Mneid ) beginning, 

" I wol now singe, if that I can, 
The armes and al-so the man, 
That first came, through his destinie, 
In Itaile, with ful moche pyne, 
Unto the strondes of Lavyne." 

Practically all of Book I is taken up with a summary of Vir- 
gil's JEneid, emphasis being placed upon iEneas's desertion 
of Dido. 

In the second book, Jove's bright eagle snatches up the 
poet, and carries him to the House of Fame, midway between 
heaven and earth. Thither all the sounds of the world are 
rushing, making a noise like " the beating of the sea against 
the hollow rocks in time of tempest. " Within the house, 
Fame sits upon her throne receiving various groups of people 
who come to have their fames decreed. Eolus, the god of 
the winds, stands by ready to blow their fames upon one of 
two clarions, Praise or Slander. Outside the palace is a house 
sixty miles long, made of twigs in constant motion. Here 
every rumor good or bad takes its shape before going to the 
House of Fame to be blown over the earth by the trumpet of 
Eolus. The poem breaks off abruptly at the 2158th line. 

The English Period. — The third period of Chaucer's life 
and work is peculiarly English. He lived in London in close 
touch with English life, growing away gradually from French 
and Italian influences. He felt keenly all the new forces of 
English national life : the sense of unity between Norman 
and Saxon, the national pride in the foreign victories of 
Edward III, the growing power of parliament, the awakened 



30 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



consciousness of the common people. All this he sought to 
interpret in the crowning work of his life, The Canterbury 
Tales. 

The scheme of The Canterbury Tales was happily chosen. 
In the Prologue the poet imagines himself one evening at the 
Tabard Inn in Southwark, near the southern end of London 
Bridge, in company with twenty-nine men and women from 
all classes of English society, ready to start on a pilgrimage 
to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. Chaucer 
describes these pilgrims with fine accuracy and great good 
humor. 

The Pilgrims. — The chivalric courtly class is represented 
by the knight and the squire. The knight is a model of 
truth and honor, liberality and courtesy. He has fought for 
the faith in many tournaments and battles, and always had 
renown. The squire, his son, is a gay young man of twenty, 
with curly hair and richly embroidered garments, and adept 
at singing, dancing, and playing the flute, yet skillful and 
strong withal. To the peasantry belong a yeoman, with 
coat and hood of green, and a forester with bow and arrows 
and horn. The church is represented by a group comprised 
of a prioress, a monk, a friar, a parson, a pardoner, and a 
summoner. They represent the shortcomings and the virtues 
of the churchmen of the time, both the corrupt ecclesiastics, 
against whom Langland wrote, and the reforming class, to 
which Wyclif belonged. The monk is a man of pleasure, 
provided with rich clothes and fine horses and especially fond 
of hunting and feasting. The friar is "a wanton and a 
merry " ecclesiastic, free in granting his absolutions, and easy 
in imposing penances. The summoner is a very repulsive 
person, with blotched face, fiery red, and with a fondness for 
garlic, onions, and strong drink. The pardoner is a careless 
fellow with a wallet full of " pardons come from Rome all 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 31 



hot." He carries also bits of cloth and pig's bones, which he 
sells as relics of the holy saints. The prioress is a dainty 
lady, whose table manners are the most exquisite, and who 
sings the divine service " entuned in her nose ful semely." 
The parson is the true and noble, representative of the church, 
rich in holy thought and work, a real preacher of the Gospel, 
careful of the good of his people, helpful in sickness and dis- 
tress, a noble example of right living, a true follower of Wyclif 
and the other reformers. The landed proprietors are repre- 
sented by the franklin, Epicurus's own son ; the professional 
classes, by the doctor and the lawyer; the business class, 
by the merchant, the miller, the carpenter, the weaver, the 
dyer, and the upholsterer. The Wife of Bath represents the 
women of the middle class. Her face is bold and her teeth 
far apart and protruding. She is conspicuously dressed, 
with hat as " broad as is a buckler or a targe, " with scarlet- 
red stockings, and with spurs upon her " shoes ful moiste 
and newe." She has a mania for pilgrimages. At the same 
time, she is an expert spinner and weaver, and has been 
attractive enough to win five husbands. Finally, the schol- 
ars are represented by a clerk of Oxford, an unworldly, hol- 
low-cheeked man in threadbare coat, but all aglow with the 
new passion for learning : 

" For him was levere have at his beddes heed 
Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed 
Of Aristotle and his philosophye, 
Than robes riche, or fithele or gay sautrye. 
But al be that he was a philosophre, 
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre ; 
But al that he mighte of his frendes hente, 
On bokes and on lerninge he it spente, 
And busily gan for the soules preye 
Of hem that yaf him wherwith to scoleye. 



32 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Of studie took he most cure and most hede. 
Noght o word spak he more than was nede, 
And that was seyd in forme and reverence. 
And short and quik and ful of hy sentence ; 
Sowninge in moral vertu was his speche, 
And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche." 

" The Knight's Tale." — At the suggestion of the host at 
the Tabard Inn, each pilgrim agrees to tell two stories on the 
way to Canterbury, and two returning, with the understand- 
ing that the best story-teller shall receive a free dinner at 
the end. Chaucer wrote, however, only twenty-four of these 
stories. The most interesting are The Knight's Tale and The 
Nun's Priest's Tale. The Knight tells the story of Palamon 
and Arcite, two Theban youths who have been captured 
by Theseus and confined in an Athenian prison. From 
the prison window, they see Theseus' s sister, Emilie, 
walking in the garden, and both fall violently in love 
with her. Arcite is released from prison and Palamon 
escapes. They meet by chance in a wood and are on the 
point of fighting when Theseus and his train interrupt. Both 
lovers are at first condemned to death ; but on the interces- 
sion of the women, a great tournament is arranged instead. 
Each lover is to appear with a hundred knights and fight for 
Emilie as the prize of victory. Palamon is overcome; but 
in the moment of victory, Arcite is thrown from his horse and 
mortally injured. In the end Palamon and Emilie are 
married. 

The Nun's Priest's Tale is a quaint and humorous story 
of the cock and the hen. Chanticleer, the king of a poor 
widow's barnyard, and Pertelote, the most beautiful of his 
seven wives, are very learned fowls, conversant with all the 
literature of the Middle Ages and even of the classical past. 
Chanticleer has had a disturbing dream, in which a bushy- 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 33 



tailed beast threatened to carry him off. Pertelote twits 
him for his cowardice, and, in the exact manner of the 
medieval schoolmen, quotes Cato to prove that dreams are 
of no significance. He needs to be purged ; and she herself 
will prepare the medicine. Chanticleer replies with quotations 
from Macrobius, Daniel, Joseph, and others to prove the 
significance of dreams. Indeed, he quite overcomes poor 
Pertelote with arguments and citations, and scorns her 
laxative. The fox presently discovers himself, and after 
flattering Chanticleer till he is off his guard, seizes him and 
starts for the woods. Then the hens set up such a cry as 
was not heard when Troy was taken and King Priam slain. 
Pertelote shrieks louder than Hasdrubale's wife at the burn- 
ing of Carthage, when her husband lost his life. The din 
arouses the widow and her daughters, who pursue the fox. 
The chase is joined by men with staves, by the dog, by the 
cow and calf, even by the very hogs, all shouting " like fiends 
in hell." At this crisis, Chanticleer persuades the fox to 
shout defiance at his pursuers and, when the fox opens 
his mouth to do so, escapes to a neighboring tree and is safe. 
The moral of the story is explained by both the cock and the 
fox : 

"For he that winketh, whan he sholde see, 
Al wilfully, God lat him never thee [thrive] !" 

" 1 Nay ' quod the fox, 'but God give him mischaunce 
That is as undiscrete of governaunce, 
That jangleth whan he sholde holde his pees/ " 

The fine satire of the poem can only be appreciated when the 
entire story is read in the original. 

(c) THE RISE OF THE DRAMA 

The Religious Plays. — The chief literary interest between 
the death of Chaucer (1400) and the birth of Shakespeare 



34 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



(1564) is in the rise of the drama. The modern drama really 
began in the services of the medieval church. The mass 
itself was a kind of drama of repentance, sacrifice, and for- 
giveness, with the dramatic effect enhanced by the belief 
that the bread and wine of the communion were actually 
changed into the body and blood of Christ. It was alto- 
gether natural that the details should be worked up with 
an eye for dramatic effects. At first, in the chanting of the 
mass, certain tones were prolonged and grace notes added. 
Later, words were supplied from the Bible text appropriate 
to the service of the day, the birth of Christ at Christmas, 
for instance, or the resurrection at Easter. Individual singers 
took the parts of the Shepherds who came to adore the baby 
Christ, or represented the angel at the grave of the Saviour, 
or the three Marys who came early on Easter morning to see 
where their Lord had been laid. As time went on, complete 
scenes with dialogue and appropriate action were presented 
in the midst of the mass, helping the audience to understand 
the service, and adding much to the popular interest. Gradu- 
ally, the scenes grew too long to be a part of the service, and 
the setting too large for the space around the high altar. The 
scenes then became separated from the mass proper and were 
performed by themselves, first in the aisles of the church, then 
at the church door, and finally, on pageant wagons drawn from 
place to place in the city streets. Finally, there were long 
series or cycles of plays representing the entire Bible story 
from Creation to Doomsday. The most important series in 
English are The Chester Plays, The York Plays, and The 
Townley Plays. These plays were exceedingly popular at the 
end of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth centuries. 

The Popular Entertainments. — When the early dramas 
ceased to be a part of the regular church service, they had to 
compete with popular entertainments, and thus became 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



35 



more subject to the popular taste. This taste had been 
fashioned by certain popular customs more or less dramatic. 
The old ballads, for instance, were acted in song and dance. 
In the May season, two young men, dressed to represent 
Summer and Winter, engaged in a symbolic contest, and 
fought till Summer won. The story of Robin Hood in 
dramatic form had a place in the Mayday celebration. 
There was also the custom of disguisings in skins of beasts 
and in masks representing beasts' heads. In particular, 
the devil with horns and tail and cloven feet was represented 
playing tricks upon the unwary, and executing countless 
buffooneries. Last of all, certain strolling entertainers 
performed feats of jugglery, represented little comic scenes 
in dialogue, and perhaps continued some of the traditions of 
the classical theater. 

The Mystery or Miracle Play. — The plays which grew 
out of the church service and became known as Mystery 
or Miracle plays were quite different from these popular 
comic entertainments, but they had to be adapted to the 
popular demands. Since the Bible story itself was hardly 
suited to comic treatment, scenes which had nothing to do 
with the Bible had to be introduced. The first of these 
scenes seems to have grown up in connection with the devil, 
who was a character both in the popular dramatic customs 
and in the religious plays. The church thought of him 
primarily as the great principle of evil, the adversary of God 
and of man, strong in the battle for souls, and delighting to 
torture those who, through his wiles, lost their hope of bliss. 
But the popular imagination had changed him into a beast- 
demon, with horns and tail and cloven feet, exhibiting gro- 
tesque and sportive characteristics. As we have seen, he was 
connected with the popular customs as a player of pranks. 
Of course, when the devil came to be represented in the 



36 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Miracle plays, the people demanded, not the old theological 
devil, but their own familiar fiend. He came upon the stage 
with his horns and tail and cloven feet, playing his pranks, 
and bringing with him much of the comedy with which he had 
been associated in the popular customs. 

The Shepherd's Play. — This comedy soon spread beyond 
the scenes in which devils appeared ; and, in the end, elabo- 
rate comic scenes were introduced, sometimes quite incongru- 
ously. In the Shepherd's Play of the Townley series, for 
instance, a genuine farce is developed, a sheep-stealing 
episode. While the shepherds are keeping watch over their 
flocks a suspicious character of the neighborhood, Mak 
by name, approaches. The shepherds are openly distrust- 
ful of the scamp, and when they lie down to sleep, make him 
lie between two of the shepherds, lest he rob their flock. 
However, while the shepherds are sleeping, Mak contrives to 
escape, steals and carries home a fat wether, and creeps back 
unnoticed to his place between the shepherds. When the 
shepherds waken, they go to count their sheep, and Mak 
hastens home to tell his wife that the theft has been discovered 
and that the shepherds will soon be at hand to search the 
house. The two plan to put the dead sheep in a cradle 
and to pretend that a baby has been born. Presently the 
shepherds appear and search the house in vain, Mak caution- 
ing them all the time not to waken the baby. Unfortunately 
for Mak, however, one of the shepherds, when on the point 
of leaving, regrets that he has been unjust to Mak and 
returns to make a little present to the baby. He pulls 
back the coverlet and discovers the sheep. 

" £ Gyf me lefe hym to kys 
And lyft up the clowtt. 
What the devill is this ? 
He has a long snowte.' " 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 



37 



The shepherds punish Mak by tossing him in a sheet. 
Just as they are finishing, the angel of the Lord ap- 
pears and the heavenly host sings the Gloria in Excelsis. 
The shepherds then proceed to Bethlehem to adore the 
Christ. 

It does not seem to have occurred to the medieval mind 
that this crude combination was either incongruous or 
sacrilegious. It pleased the audience, and — a thing which 
is of much more importance — it introduced into the English 
drama the notion of double plot, a serious main plot and 
a comic underplot, side by side, but often quite inde- 
pendent. 

The Morality Play. — In the course of time the Miracle 
plays passed beyond the control of the clergy into the hands 
of the trade guilds, which used them as the attractive feature 
of great public fairs. These occasions furnished a harvest 
time for thieves and scoundrels. Confidence games and 
all sorts of immoralities flourished. The clergy, therefore, 
turned against the Miracle play and introduced a new and 
less objectionable drama. This was the Morality play, in 
which abstrac t qualit ies were personified and brought upon 
the stage tojwork^out some m oral lesson. Virtues and vices,, 
for instance, contended for the soul of mankind, the virtues, 
of course, being victorious. The best known of these plays 
is Everyman. 

" After a brief prologue spoken by a Messenger, the action opens 
when Adonai, looking down upon the sinful earth, perceives how 
Everyman 'lyveth after his own pleasure,' as if ignoring the utter 
uncertainty of the tenure of human life. He therefore calls upon 
Death, his ' mighty messengere' to proceed to Everyman, and 
sinnmoTi Jrimjtc^ u ndertake a pilgrimagejwhich he in no wise may 
escape, and bid him bring with him without delay a sure reckoning. 
Death delivers his message to Everyman, who tries in vain by pleas 



38 ENGLISH LITERATURE 

and bribes to turn the summoner away. Then, having received 
the hint that he ' should prove his friends if he can/ to see whether 
any of them is so hardy as to accompany him on the journey 
which he must take, Everyman, left alone in his terror, bethinks him 
of appealing to his old friend Fellowship, his comrade in many a 
day of sport and play, to go with him. Fellowship, accosted as 
he passes over the stage, is full of assurances, for which he will not 
be thanked. But a mention of the service required soon brings a 
change over his professions, though he is quite at Everyman's 
service for a dinner or murder or anything of that sort. When 
he has departed, and Everyman has made a similarly futile appeal 
to two associates called Kinsman and Cousin, he calls to mind one 
other friend whom he has loved all his life, and who will surely 
prove true to him in his distress. Riches this abstraction is called ; 
'Property' would be the modern equivalent. . . . But although, 
with self-confidence of capital, Riches avers that there is no difficulty 
in the world which he cannot set straight, Everyman's difficulty is 
unfortunately not one this world can settle. He has therefore in 
despair to fall back upon-the-very last of the friends of whom he can 
think — his Good-Deeds. Good-Deeds answers that she is so weak 
that she can barely rise from the ground, where she lies cold and 
bound in Everyman's sins. Yet not only will she respond to his 
entreaty, t>ut she will bring with her Knowledge, her sister, to help 
him in making 'that dredeful rekenyge/ Knowledge, by whom we 
may suppose to be meant the discreet and learned advice which 
religion has at her service, declares her willingness to stand by 
Everyman at the judgment seat, and meanwhile by her advice 
he addresses himself to Confession, who bestows on him a precious 
jewel, 'Called penannce, voyder of adversyte.' 

As he begins his last journey, a mortal weakness comes over him ; 
one after another his companions, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, the 
Five Wits, take their leave, Good Deeds shall make all sure; and 
that the voices of angels are even now welcoming the ransomed soul. 
And as an Angel descends to carry it heavenward, a personage called 
Doctor epitomizes the lesson which the action of the play has illus- 
trated," 



THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD 39 



The Interlude. — Another type of play was the interlude, 
at first a little scene performed between the courses of a 
banquet, but later enlarged and developed. An example is 
The Foure PP by John Heywood, a scene in which a Pothe- 
cary, a Pardoiier, and a Palmer enter into a contest to deter- 
mine which can tell the biggest lie. The Pedler is the judge. 
The Pothecary tells of his wondrous cures ; the Pardoner, 
of how he went down to hell to pardon a sinner. Each 
tells a lie worthy of the prize, but the Palmer wins with the 
following : 

"Yet have I sene many a myle 
And many a woman in the whyle, — 
Not one good cytye, towne, nor borough 
In Cristendom but I have be thorough — 
And this I wolde ye shulde understande : 
I have sene women a hundred thousande 
And oft with them have longe tyme taryed, 
Yet in all places where I have been 
Of all the women that I have sene, 
I never sawe nor knewe, in my consyens 
Any one woman out of paciens." 

They all cry out at the magnitude of this lie, and the Pedler 
awards the prize to the Palmer. 

Conclusion. — The Miracles, Moralities, and Interludes 
were the principal types of native English drama before the 
Renaissance. In the sixteenth century, however, the re- 
vival of learning brought into favor, especially at the schools 
and universities, the dramatic literature of Greece and of 
Rome. Plautus, Terence, and Seneca were especially pop- 
ular among the cultivated classes. Gradually the influence 
of these dramatists affected the popular theater. In the 
end, the two — the drama of the schoolmen and the drama 
of the people — united to produce the great dramatic lit- 



40 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



erature of Shakespeare's time. A discussion of this, how- 
ever, belongs in the next chapter. 

Suggested Readings 1 

Ballads and Romances: (1) Selections from Old English Ballads; 
(2) Malory's Morte d' Arthur, Books XIII and XVII. 

Chaucer: Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, The Knight's Tale, 
The Nun's Priest's Tale. 

Drama : The Second Shepherd's Play, Everyman, and Other Early 
Plays. (Riverside Literature Series, No 191.) 

1 Except where special editions are mentioned, the books are to be found 
in the Pocket Series of English Classics, published by The Macmillan 
Company. 



CHAPTER III 



THE RENAISSANCE 

The sixteenth century was a time of great intellectual 
activity in England ; almost, if not quite, the most brilliant 
period in English literature. Back in the fifteenth century 
events had taken place which were fast transforming the in- 
tellectual life of all Europe. At first these events were more 
influential on the continent than in England, because the 
Wars of the Roses had so distracted the English people and 
wasted their energies that intellectual progress was almost 
'impossible. Still, there were signs of revival even in fifteenth- 
century England, and at the beginning of the new century 
the nation was ready to yield itself with enthusiasm to all 
the forces of the Renaissance. The most important of these 
forces, as far as literature is concerned, were the rise of Human- 
ism, the invention of printing, the discovery of the new world, 
and the Reformation. 

Humanism is the name given to the reawakened interest 
in the study of the classical literature of Greece and of Rome. 
It began in Italy. Indeed, at the end of the fifteenth century, 
Italy led the world in learning. Earlier in the century, 
Constantinople had been the center of the Greek learning; 
but after the capture of the city by the Turks in 1453 
Greek scholars flocked into Italy, bringing numerous Greek 
manuscripts with them, and spreading the influence of 
their learning everywhere. Copies of these manuscripts 
were distributed over all Europe, reaching, among other 
places, the English universities. 

41 



42 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The Invention of Printing. — This humanistic movement 
was greatly accelerated by Gutenberg's invention of printing. 
Before this invention the masterpieces of literature were 
written out by hand on parchment or vellum, and were there- 
fore very costly. The only books, as the term is commonly 
understood, were picture books called " block books/' printed 
on coarse paper from wooden blocks. Some of the " blocks " 
contained words and sentences, but movable type was not used 
until Gutenberg invented the printing press. The method of 
printing from movable type was completely successful before 
the end of the fifteenth century, and was introduced into 
England by William Caxton in 1476. Printing made books 
much cheaper. Manuscripts were worth fifty cents a page 
or more, and were consequently beyond the reach of all but 
the most wealthy. One of Caxton's books entire could be 
bought for from thirty to fifty dollars. This seems high- 
priced to us in the days of numerous cheap editions, but the 
printed book was so much less expensive than manuscript 
that a great impetus was given to the spread of learning. 

Maritime Discoveries. — The minds of men were stim- 
ulated also by a rapid series of maritime discoveries. Colum- 
bus discovered America in 1492. Almost immediately 
afterward Vasco da Gama rounded Africa and reached In- 
dia by sea. The Cabots sailed to the mainland of North 
America, and brought back wonderful stories of the new 
continent. In 1520 Magellan sailed round the world. And 
to know the circumference of the earth was not all, for 
Copernicus discovered that the earth itself, huge as it seemed, 
is but an insignificant thing in the wide universe, just one of 
the myriad stars, and by no means the most important. All 
this knowledge enlarged the mind and stimulated the imagina- 
tion more than we can easily realize. 

The Reformation. — The Reformation, too, was a mighty 



THE RENAISSANCE 



43 



influence. Martin Luther, in Germany, insisted upon the 
right of the individual to think for himself, and aroused a 
widespread desire for a more thorough knowledge of the 
Scriptures in order to learn better the real grounds for the 
Christian faith. This inspired William Tyndale, an English 
clergyman, to translate the Bible into the English of his own 
day. Wyclif's translation had had but a limited influence, 
because it had circulated only in manuscript, and because 
the language had changed much since Wyclif's time. Tyn- 
dale's printed Bible was far more influential. The Reverend 
Stopford Brooke says of it : "It was this Bible which, re- 
vised by Cover dale and edited and reedited as Cromwell's 
Bible in 1539, and again as Cranmer's Bible, 1540, was set 
up in every parish church in England. It got north into 
Scotland and made the Lowland English more like the 
London English. It passed over to the Protestant settle- 
ments in Ireland. After its revival in 1611 it went with the 
Puritan Fathers to New England and fixed the standard of 
English in America. Millions of people now speak the Eng- 
lish of Tyndale's Bible, The King James Version, and there 
is no other book which has had so great an influence on the 
style of English literature and the standard of English Prose/ ' 

(a) NON-DRAMATIC LITERATURE 

Miscellanies. — One of the first significant books showing 
the Renaissance influence in England is TotteVs Miscellany, 
a collection of poems published in 1557, the year before 
Elizabeth's accession. Many of the poems of this collection 
were written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, 
Earl of Surrey, court poets of the time of Henry VIII, who 
were inspired largely by the Italian culture. Twenty-six 
of Wyatt's sonnets, for example, are translations from 
Petrarch. This miscellany was followed by many similar 



44 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



collections both in poetry and prose, notably The Mirror for 
Magistrates (1559), Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), and 
Painter's Palace of Pleasure (1566). These collections, es- 
pecially the last, furnished Shakespeare and his contem- 
poraries with the subject-matter for many of their famous 
masterpieces. 

John Lyly and Sir Philip Sidney. — More important than 
miscellanies are John Lyly's Euphues and Sir Philip Sidney's 
Arcadia. Both are prose stories, long and full of digressions. 
Euphues consists of a loose framework of story into which 
Lyly fits his ideas of love, friendship, education, and religion. 
The latter part reflects the life, the talk, and the dress of the 
court of Elizabeth, its fantastic and extravagant gallantry, 
its fanciful imitation of chivalry, its far-fetched metaphors 
and playing with language, its curious and gorgeous fashions 
in dress. The Arcadia is a pastoral romance, full of fine and 
delicate sentiment, polished and poetic, quite like its author, 
the noble Christian knight who was recognized as the pattern 
gentleman of his time. Both stories represent the new Re- 
naissance interest in the art of writing. There is an effort 
to make them smooth and charming in style. They seem 
artificial to-day because they are so fantastic and flowery. 
Yet they helped to give polish to literature, and they are full 
of imaginative thought, which furnished much material to the 
poets of the time. 

" The Shepherd's Calendar." — The most famous poet of 
the period was Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). His work 
represents the indirect and artificial manner of the pastoral 
and the allegory. His first important work, The Shepherd's 
Calendar (1579), is a conventional pastoral. The characters 
are spoken of as shepherds and shepherdesses, and they have 
the sheep and the crook, but in thought they are far from 
simple country people. The Calendar is a collection of poems. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



45 



one for each month of the year. Only five of them have to 
do directly with country life. The rest comprise fable, 
satire, allegory. One of them is in praise of the Queen. 
They were recognized at once as being the best poetry since 
Chaucer's time. 

"The Faerie Queene."- — Spenser's greatest work was The 
Faerie Queene, an allegory published in 1590. The poem is 
an allegorical romance of chivalry. In the introductory 
letter to Raleigh, Spenser explains that his plan is to write, 
in twelve books, the adventures of twelve knights, who 
represent the twelve virtues of Aristotle, and who contend 
with the opposing vices. The main hero, however, was to 
be Arthur, the hero of the old romances, who represents the 
sum of all virtues. In the end he was to be wedded to the 
Faerie Queene, the glory of God, to which all human act 
and thought aspire. The Faerie Queene also represents 
Queen Elizabeth. Duessa is Mary Queen of Scots. Arthur 
is sometimes Leicester, and sometimes Sidney. Other al- 
legories also slip in, referring often to the events of the day. 
Only six of the proposed books were completed, the legends 
of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and 
Courtesy. The allegory is clear in the first two books ; but, 
as the story advances, digressions frequently appear, and 
the allegory becomes complicated. 

It is not necessary, however, to figure out all the allegory 
in order to enjoy the book. The poem may be read simply 
for its exquisite pictures, its rich and varied imagery, the 
ever changing music of the verse, and, in general, the pre- 
vailing atmosphere of romance. The Reverend Stopford 
Brooke says of it : 

"It is the poem of the noble power of the human soul struggling 
towards union with God, and warring against all the forms of 
evil; and these powers become real personages, whose lives and 



46 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



battles Spenser tells in verse so musical and gliding, so delicately 
wrought, so rich in imaginative ornament, and so inspired with the 
finer life of beauty, that he has been called the poet's Poet." De- 
scriptions like those of the House of Pride and the Mask of Cupid, 
and of the Months, are so vivid in form, and color, that they have 
always made subjects for artists, while the allegorical personages 
are, to the very last detail, wrought out by an imagination which 
describes not only the general character, but the special characteris- 
tics of the Virtues or the Vices, of the Months of the year, or of the 
Rivers of England. In its ideal whole, the poem represents the 
new love of chivalry, of classical learning, the delight in mystic 
theories of love and religion, in allegorical schemes, in splendid 
spectacles and pageants, in wild adventure, the love of England, the 
hatred of Spain, the strange worship of the Queen, even Spenser's 
own new love. It takes up and uses the popular legends of fairies, 
dwarfs, and giants, all the machinery of the Italian epics, and 
mingles them up with the wild scenery of Ireland and the savages 
and wonders of the New World. Almost the whole spirit of the 
Renaissance under Elizabeth, except its coarser and baser ele- 
ments, is in its pages. Of anything impure, or ugly, or violent, 
there is no trace. And Spenser adds to all his own sacred love of 
love, his own preeminent sense of the loveliness of loveliness, walk- 
ing through the whole of this woven world of faerie — 

'With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace. ' " 

The Spenserian Stanza. — The verse form of The Faerie 
Queene was an invention of Spenser and is known as the 
Spenserian stanza. It consists of nine iambic lines, eight of 
five feet each, and the last of six feet, riming ababbcbcc. The 
following passage, relating to Morpheus, god of sleep, illus- 
trates the meter and at the same time well exemplifies the 
sweetness and beauty of poetic style which is peculiarly 
Spenserian. 

"And more to lulle him in his slumber soft, 

A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, 



THE RENAISSANCE 



47 



And ever-drizling raine upon the loft, 
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 
Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne. 
No other noyse, nor people troublous cryes, 
As still are wont V annoy the walled towne, 
Might there be heard ; but carlesse Quiet lyes 
Wrapt in eternal silence farre from enimyes." 

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was another distinguished 
literary figure. He was a man of great learning, a judge, an 
effective speaker in parliament, a writer of essays and philo- 
sophical treatises. Most of his philosophical work is in 
Latin; The Advancement of Learning, in both Latin and Eng- 
lish; the Essays, in English alone. His fame in English 
literature rests largely upon the Essays, notably those on 
Studies, Riches, Adversity, Friendship, Great Place. His writ- 
ings are not emotional and romantic like Lyly's Euphues and 
Sidney's Arcadia, but highly intellectual. Simplicity and di- 
rectness are the prevailing attributes of his style. The follow- 
ing much-quoted passage from Studies is characteristic : 

" Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some 
few to be chewed and digested ; that is, some books are to be read 
only in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some few 
to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." 

(6) DRAMATIC LITERATURE 

The most important literature of this period is the drama. 
The age itself was objective, adventurous, dramatic ; and 
naturally expressed itself in dramatic form. The theater be- 
came the center of the national life. It served as newspaper, 
magazine, and text book of history, as we have explained 
elsewhere (Part I, p. 39). Nearly every phase of life and 
thought was reflected in the stage plays. Never has the 
drama been more sensitive to the influences of real life. 



48 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Revival of Classical Drama in the Schools. — Humanism 
had its part to play in this dramatic development. During 
the Middle Ages the traditions of the classical drama had been 
practically obliterated. The manuscripts of the Greek and 
of the Latin plays were well-nigh forgotten, hidden away, 
as they were, in the libraries of the monasteries, and 
seldom read. But with the revival of learning, these 
plays were brought to light and carefully studied in the 
monasteries and schools. It was found that a good way 
to teach Latin to boys w r as to have them present, in 
Latin, scenes from Plautus and Terence, or act drama- 
tized versions of stories like that of the Prodigal Son. 
Thus originated " the drama of the schools/' founded upon 
classical models. 

" Ralph Roister Doister." — The first play in English on the 
classical models is generally supposed to be Ralph Roister 
Doister (1552 or 1553). It was written by Nicholas Udall, 
a schoolmaster, to be acted by the boys of Eton School. 
It was full of horse-play of the kind the boys certainly de- 
lighted in acting. Ralph, the central figure, is a conceited 
simpleton upon whom Merrygreeke and others play numerous 
tricks. Ralph wishes to marry a rich widow, and writes her 
a love letter. But Merrygreeke changes the punctuation and 
reads the letter to the lady in such a way as to alter the 
entire meaning. The widow becomes angry; but Ralph 
persists in his suit. Finally, annoyed beyond endurance, 
she arms her maidens with broomsticks and other household 
articles, and drives him away in great discomfiture. The 
play is written on the model of the comedies of Plautus. 
It furnished English playwrights an excellent example of 
rapid dialogue and clearly constructed plot. 

" Gammer Gurton's Needle," another early comedy, is a 
more realistic picture of English peasant life. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



49 



" Gammer Gurton is patching the leather breeches of her man 
Hodge, when Gib, the cat, gets into the milkpan. While Gammer 
chases the cat the family needle is lost, a veritable calamity in those 
days. The whole household is turned upside down and the neighbors 
are dragged into the affair. Various comical situations are brought 
about by Diccon, a thieving vagabond, who tells Gammer that her 
neighbor, Dame Chatte, has taken her needle, and who then hurries 
to tell Dame Chatte that she is accused by Gammer of stealing a 
favorite rooster. Naturally there is a terrible row when the irate 
old women meet and misunderstand each other. Diccon also 
drags Doctor Rat, the curate, into the quarrel by telling him that, 
if he will but creep into Dame Chattels cottage by a hidden way, 
he will find her using the stolen needle. Then Diccon secretly 
warns Dame Chatte that Gammer Gurton's man Hodge is coming 
to steal her chickens ; and the old woman hides in the dark passage 
and cudgels the curate soundly with the door bar. All the parties 
are finally brought before the justice, when Hodge suddenly and 
painfully finds the lost needle — which is all the while stuck in 
his leather breeches — and the scene ends uproariously for both 
audience and actors." 

" Gorboduc." — The first English tragedy along classical 
lines was Gorboduc, written by Thomas Sackville and Thomas 
Norton. It was acted in 1561(2) at the Inner Temple, the 
London law school to which the authors belonged. The 
story is similar to that of King Lear. The outline follows : 

"Gorboduc, king of Brittaine, divided his realme in his lifetime 
to his sonnes, Ferrex and Porrex ; the sonnes fell to discention ; the 
yonger killed the eider ; the mother, that more dearely loved the 
elder, for revenge killed the yonger ; the people, moved by the 
crueltie of the fact, rose in rebellion and slew both father and 
mother; the nobility assembled and most terribly destroyed the 
rebels ; and after wardes, for want of issue of the prince, whereby 
the succession of the crowne became uncertaine, they fell to civil 
warre, in which both they and many of their issues were slain, and 
the land for a long time almost desolate and miserably wasted." 



50 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The plan of the play follows the classical rules of Seneca. 
Blood flows profusely, but not a drop is shed upon the stage. 
Messengers relate the bloody deeds, and choruses comment 
upon them. 

The Chronicle History Play. — The influence of the classical 
drama was for some time confined to the schools and univer- 
sities. The plays performed by professional actors in the 
inn-yards and, after 1576, in theater buildings, followed 
native traditions. The popularity of the old Miracle play 
had waned ; but the new Chronicle History play preserved 
the old dramatic traditions. The only important change 
was to substitute English history for Bible history. Ex- 
amples of the Chronicle History play are The First part of 
the Contention betwixt the two famous houses of Yorke and 
Lancaster, The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and 
The Famous Victories of Henry V. These plays are re- 
markable, not for their intrinsic merits, but because the first 
two formed the basis of the three parts of Henry VI, at- 
tributed to Shakespeare, and the third furnished suggestions 
for Shakespeare's Henry IV, Parts I and II, and Henry V. 
Compared with Shakespeare's work, they seem very crude 
indeed. 

The Drama of Blood. — The same popular dramatic 
methods were used in putting on the stage every new murder 
or scandal and all the thrilling Italian and Spanish stories 
which now began to crowd the London bookstalls. A 
veritable drama of blood grew up, very crude in form, glut- 
ting the people with horrors. Unlike Gorboduc, these popular 
tragedies presented all the bloodshed on the stage. The 
people demanded the representation of the deed itself. A 
mere account of it by a messenger was too tame. 

"The Spanish Tragedy." — The most popular of these 
dramas was, perhaps, The Spanish Tragedy, by Thomas Kyd, 



THE RENAISSANCE 



51 



who is also supposed to have written the first play on the 
Hamlet story. The outline of The Spanish Tragedy reveals 
its general character. Andrea, a Spanish nobleman, is sent 
to claim tribute from the king of Portugal. War arises and 
Andrea is slain. His friend Horatio captures the Portu- 
guese prince, Belthazar, and returns to Spain. Here Horatio 
falls in love with Bel-Imperia, formerly the lady love of 
Andrea, and is beloved by her in return; but her brother 
Lorenzo, a court villain of the blackest stamp, wishing her 
to marry Belthazar, murders Horatio and hangs him to a 
tree in his father's garden. Here Hieronimo, the father, 
discovers the body of his son, and vows the rest of his life 
to vengeance upon the assassin. A play is devised at court 
in which Lorenzo and Belthazar take part. At the close 
Hieronimo and Bel-Imperia stab the two traitors and after- 
wards put an end to their own lives. In this play there are 
six murders, three executions, two deaths in combat, and 
three suicides. The popular playwright cared little for the 
restraint of the classical drama. 

The Popular Drama and the Drama of the Schools. — 
There was thus a marked contrast between the popular 
drama and the drama of the scholars. The popular play- 
wrights scorned what they considered the stupid pedantry 
in the plays of the schoolmen, and the tedious description 
and disquisition. The scholars, in turn, scoffed, not with- 
out reason, at the rustic buffooneries and profuse bloodshed 
in which the popular writers seemed to delight. The school- 
men represented art without life ; the popular playwrights, 
life without art. There was also a contrast in dramatic 
method. When the popular playwright wished to dramatize 
a story, he took it up at the beginning and by a series of 
scenes with changes of time, place, and action, developed it 
gradually to its climax and catastrophe. The schoolman, 



52 ENGLISH LITERATURE 



on the contrary, had a tendency to hit at once upon the crisis 
or catastrophe, and to present only that confined to one time 
and place, bringing out what had happened before or else- 
where by a messenger, who relates it, or by the chorus, which 
reflects upon it. The schoolmen tried to force upon the 
popular playwrights the methods of the ancient dramatists. 
They pointed out the irregularities and inconsistencies of 
the popular dramas and laughed at their lack of art. 1 The 
playwrights, however, cared little for this. They had the 
ear of the people and would not put up with the restraints 
and limitations of classical art. The real dramatic problem 
of the time was to take what was best in each of these schools 
— the art of the one and the vigorous life of the other — 
and unite them into enduring drama. This was accom- 
plished by Marlowe, Shakespeare, and their contemporaries. 

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) was the son of a 
shoemaker, but he had the advantages of university life 
at Cambridge, and when he came up to London to write 
plays for the public stage, he brought with him a knowl- 
edge of classical dramatic art. He was forced to write in 
the popular style or starve. Yet he saw the weaknesses of 
the popular style and began at once to modify it. To the 
rambling stories he gave a more definite unity than had before 
been attempted. He always came to his work with some 
great central idea to express, some master passion to de- 
lineate. In Tamburlaine, it is the thirst for unlimited power, 
the inordinate desire of a man in the lowest rank of life for 
the honors of an absolute throne. In Doctor Faustus, it 
is the scholar's desire for more than mortal knowledge, 
" the climbing after knowledge infinite," even at the 
risk of his immortal soul. In The Jew of Malta, it is the 
inordinate desire for gold — not the sordid vice of avarice, 

1 See Sidney, The Defence of Poesie. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



53 



but a passion lifted by the imagination into the realm of 
poetry. In Edward II, it is again the thirst for power, an 
overmastering passion which cares not to count the cost. 
The same audacity that made Tamburlaine say, 

"HI mount the top with my aspiring wings 
Although my downfall be the darkest hell," 

the same recklessness that made Faustus exclaim^ 

"Had I as many souls as there be stars 
I'd give them all for Mephitopholis," 

led Mortimer in Edward II to hazard everything for the 
throne, and to say at last when retribution came upon him, 

"Base fortune now I see that in thy wheel 
There is a point, to which, when men aspire, 
They tumble headlong down ; that point I touch'd 
And seeing there was no place to mount higher 
Why should I grieve at my declining fall?" 

Passion Interest. — The passion interest is often extrava- 
gant. Tamburlaine, " scourging kingdoms with his con- 
quering sword," is sometimes absurd. The atrocities of the 
Jew of Malta are quite inhuman. Yet to unify the action 
about one central theme was a distinct dramatic gain ; and 
in his grand way Marlowe was sometimes very effective. 
Charles Lamb says of the catastrophe scene in Edward II, 
where the King, standing in the "mire and puddle" of 
the dungeon of Berkeley Castle, gazes into the eyes of his 
murderer with the fine spirit of the Plantagenets : " This 
scene moves pity and terror beyond any scene ancient or 
modern with which I am familiar." 

Characterization. — Some of the characters lack individ- 
uality. Tamburlaine is just the incarnation of brute force. 
The Jew of Malta is not a real Jew ; he is only the personi- 



54 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



fication of the popular hatred of the Jew. There is no 
humanity about him as there is about Shakespeare's Shylock. 
Even Dr. Faustus is not strongly individualized. Yet 
Faustus is after all a fine type of medieval rebel, pursuing the 
path of forbidden knowledge with unholy ardor. Mortimer, 
in Edward II, reminds us a little of Shakespeare's Hotspur. 
And Edward II reveals, in the end, a distinct personality, 
weak in many ways, it is true, but with the genuine dignity 
and strength of kingship behind all the folly and caprice. 
Marlowe's characters lack the delicate, refining touches of 
finished work; but they are colossal figures, grandly con- 
ceived and magnificently executed. 

Marlowe's Blank Verse. — Marlowe also did much for the 
development of blank verse. The schoolmen had employed 
lines of ten syllables without rime since the time Gorboduc 
was written, but their failure to produce varied and rhythmi- 
cal verse was conspicuous. There was not the jingle of the 
recurring rime, but each line stood awkwardly in its place, 
stiff, monotonous, isolated. Marlowe made the thought 
flow on from line to line unimpeded ; balanced phrase against 
phrase; built up periods as in prose ; and by a variety of 
cadences gave to the verse a changing melody. Some of 
his later lines would not seem out of place in Shakespeare. 

Periods of Shakespeare's Work. — Shakespeare carried 
on and developed the Marlowe tradition, adding to dignity 
and strength, delicacy and humor. The year 1600 divides 
Shakespeare's work almost exactly in the middle. For ten 
or twelve years before, and for ten or twelve years after 
1600, he was closely connected with the London public 
theater both as playwright and actor. These two periods 
in turn divide themselves almost equally, making four well- 
defined periods in the development of Shakespeare's art as a 
dramatist. The first period was a time of apprenticeship 



THE RENAISSANCE 



55 



and experiment, when he was working out from under the 
influence of other men, and feeling his way along new lines 
of dramatic work. The Comedy of Errors and Richard III 
belong to this period. Professor Dowden characterizes 
this time the catch phrase " In the Workshop." Dur- 
ing the second period (1595-1601) Shakespeare was enlarg- 
ing his experience of the world, delighting in its pageantry, 
analyzing its forces, formulating its laws, and learning to 
express himself with freedom of style and mastery of dra- 
matic form. It is the great objective period of the poet's 
life. Professor Dowden characterizes it by the phrase " In 
the World." Here belong Henry IV and As You Like 
It as typical plays. In the third period (1601-1608) Shake- 
speare was concerned with the deeper experiences of life, 
not the pageantry of the world without, but the problems 
of the world within. He wrestled with the problem of 
the inner life, the motives for conduct, the passions of the 
human heart. Professor Dowden calls this period " Out of 
the Depths." To it belong the great tragedies, of which 
Macbeth and Hamlet are examples. In the fourth period 
(1608-1612) the poet worked away from this dark and som- 
ber tragedy, from experiences of questioning and tumult and 
passion, into a serene philosophic calm. " On the Heights" 
is Professor Dowden's phrase for this period. Typical plays 
are The Tempest and Winter's Tale. " In the Workshop," 
" In the World," " Out of the Depths," " On the Heights " ; 
apprenticeship, objective experience, subjective analysis, 
philosophic serenity — this represents a bird's-eye view of 
Shakespeare's mental development. The following table 
classifies the poet's works according to the four periods : 

First Period, Early Experiment. Venus and Adonis, 
Rape of Lucrece, 1594 ; Titus Andronicus, Henry VI (three 
parts), 1590-1591; Love's Labour's Lost, 1590; Comedy of 



56 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1591-1592 ; Richard III, 
1593 ; Richard II, King John, 1594-1595 ; Sonnets, 1593- 
1598. 

Second Period, Development. Romeo and Juliet, Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, 1595 ; Merchant of Venice, Henry IV 
(first part), 1596; Henry IV (second part), Merry Wives of 
Windsor, 1597; Much Ado About Nothing, 1598; As You 
Like It, Henry V, 1599. 

Third Period, Maturity and Gloom. Twelfth Night, 1600 ; 
Taming of the Shrew, Julius Ccesar, Hamlet, Troilus and 
Cressida, 1601-1602; All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for 
Measure, 1603; Othello, 1604; King Lear, 1605 ; Macbeth, 
1606 ; Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, 1607. 

Fourth Period, Philosophic Serenity. Coriolanus, Pericles, 
1608; Cymbeline, 1609; Winter's Tale, 1610-1611; The 
Tempest, 1611; Henry VIII. 

Shakespeare was not a genius who wrote as well at the 
beginning as at the end of his career. He had to learn his 
art just as other men do. He learned, however, through 
experiment and not by writing from models ; for with the 
exception of some of Marlowe's work he had in the plays then 
in vogue in the public theaters only crude models to work 
from, and the classical plays of the schools were not adapted 
to the popular taste. His work was to develop dramatic 
types which were both successful stage plays and pieces of 
literary art. The principal Shakespearean types are his- 
tory, comedy, and tragedy. All three existed in a crude 
form when he began to write for the stage. He developed 
each to a high degree of perfection. 

The History Play, or, more strictly, the Chronicle History 
play, never shook off the older conventional form, even 
under Shakespeare's hand. The serious main plot and the 
comic underplot remained side by side without a connection 



Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 
Portia. 

After the painting by John Everett Millais. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



57 



vital enough to give real dramatic unity to the play as a 
whole; and the dialogue in the serious main plot never 
became acting dialogue in a true dramatic sense ; to the end, 
it retained its narrative and oratorical qualities. Yet instead 
of the tedious narrative, bombastic declamation, and crude 
buffoonery of the early plays, Shakespeare developed bril- 
liant oratory and spirited declamation in the main plot, and 
a genuine comedy of manners in the underplot. The por- 
trayal of character, too, finds full development. Henry V 
is Shakespeare's ideal man of action. Falstaff is still con- 
sidered the greatest comic character in literature. 

Comedy had existed before Shakespeare as a distinct 
dramatic type in the plays of John Lyly, with their clever 
dialogue ; in the mask entertainments of the court, full of 
dancing and singing; and in the classical comedies like 
Ralph Roister Doister, notable for their comic situations. 
Shakespeare doubled the complications of the classical 
dramas in his Comedy of Errors; utilized all the mask effects 
in A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest; and, in 
such plays as Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing, 
developed the type known as Romantic Comedy, employing 
all the sources of comic effect in genuinely clever dialogue, 
well-conceived situations, and carefully constructed plots. 

Tragedy. — The drama of blood was elevated by Shake- 
speare into real tragedy. In his plays, the emphasis is no 
longer upon the shedding of blood for the mere horror of it, 
but -upon the motives for action which lie deep in the pas- 
sionate heart. He treats the very essence of tragedy in the 
struggle between the individual and his surroundings, the 
conflict between will and fate, the strife between the " musts " 
and the " can'ts " in human life. (See Part I, p. 46.) When 
the individual will says, " I must," and the external forces 
of life say, " You can't," we have the basis for the tragic 



58 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



clash which Shakespeare made his plays interpret. Mac- 
bethy Hamlet, and King Lear are not mere dramas of blood, 
but very searching interpretations of life. 

Ben Jonson's Tragedies. — Ben Jonson (1573?-1637) 
was Shakespeare's greatest contemporary and rival. He was 
of humble birth, but he had more schooling than Shake- 
speare, and became, in the end, the most learned dramatist 
of the time. He set himself against what he considered the 
imaginative extravagance of his contemporaries and culti- 
vated the restraint of the classicists. In tragedy, particularly, 
he took up the line of development which had been begun in 
Gorboduc and tried to convert the popular drama to the 
ideas of Seneca. Sejanus and Cataline are his important 
historical tragedies. They are very learned; they are 
scrupulously accurate in the matter of historical details; 
they conform in general to the classical " unities." The 
characters, however, are not so genuinely human as are 
Shakespeare's men and women. The style is not so direct 
and strong. 

Jonson's Comedies. — Jonson's best comedies are: Every- 
man in his Humour, The Silent Woman, Volpone, The 
Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. They illustrate " the 
comedy of humors." The author seizes upon some eccen- 
tricity of character, some peculiar trait of human nature, 
and emphasizes that, neglecting the natural complexities 
of character. Volpone, for example, is a study of avarice ; 
The Alchemist, a study of quackery. The Silent W&man 
is particularly noteworthy. The leading character's special 
peculiarity or " humor " is a horror of noise. This person, 
Morose by name, lives in a street too narrow to admit 
carriages; he pads the door; he puts mattresses on the 
stairs ; he forces his servants to go about in thick stockings. 
In a hasty moment, he resolves to marry in order to keep 



THE RENAISSANCE 



59 



his money away from a nephew, Eugenie, whom he dislikes. 
He believes his wife to be a rare silent woman ; but she finds 
her voice immediately after the marriage, talks loudly, 
reforms the household, and drives Morose in distraction to 
the garret. Morose finally agrees to give the nephew £500 
a year to be released from his torment. The silent woman 
turns out to be a boy in disguise. The play is full of bright, 
quick movement and splendid fun. 

Jonson's Masks. — Jonson was also famous as a writer of 
masks. They were performed mostly before the court of 
James I at Whitehall. Mythological and allegorical scenes 
were presented with magnificent costuming and against a 
background of elaborate scenery designed by the court arch- 
itect, Inigo Jones. The best of these masks are The Masque 
of Beauty, The Hue and Cry after Cupid, and The Masque 
of Queens. 

Thomas Heywood was a dramatist of whose life as a writer 
little is known except that it was long, extending from the 
time of Marlowe to the closing of the theaters in 1642. He 
has been called a " dramatic journalist," because he tried to 
do through the drama what is now accomplished through 
the newspaper and the lecture. His most famous play is a 
drama of simple domestic life, A Woman killed with Kind- 
ness. Domestic life mixed with adventure is exemplified in 
The Fair Maid of the West; it contains pictures of life in an 
English seaport town and some spirited, melodramatic sea 
fighting. 

Beaumont and Fletcher. — Francis Beaumont (1584- 
1616) and John Fletcher (1579-1625) worked together; 
over fifty plays bear their joint names. Both were high 
born and well educated, though not classicists in the sense 
that Ben Jonson was. The partnership worked so well that 
the critics have not been able to determine exactly what 



60 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



part of the work is Beaumont's and what part Fletcher's. 
The most that can be said is that Beaumont seems to have 
had the deeper and more serious imagination and a greater 
power of dramatic construction. Fletcher's gifts were lyric 
sweetness and sentiment and a fluency of style. Philaster 
is their most famous joint product. It treats of a jealous 
lover and a faithful lady love, who follows him in the disguise 
of a page. The play is thoroughly romantic in tone. 

"The Faithful Shepherdess." — Beaumont died in 1616, 
leaving Fletcher to work on alone until 1625. Of the plays 
which Fletcher wrote alone, The Faithful Shepherdess is the 
most noteworthy. It is a pastoral play of rare beauty. 
The songs are particularly exquisite. Milton took from this 
play many hints for his Comas. 

Middleton and Webster. — Thomas Middleton (1570?- 
1627) and John Webster reverted to the old " tragedy of 
blood " in the style of Kyd and Marlowe. Shakespeare had 
lifted this type into real spiritual tragedy in such plays as 
King Lear and Hamlet, but Middleton and Webster did not 
maintain Shakespeare's high standard. They relied, for the 
most part, upon the mere physical horror of the graveyard 
and the madhouse. Middleton's Changeling, his best-known 
play, is sensational and repulsive. The situations are un- 
natural and do violence to the moral sense. Webster's 
greatest plays, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, 
are crowded with physical horrors. In spite of Middleton's 
mastery of language and Webster's power of conceiving 
character, in spite of occasional fine outbursts of poetry on 
the part of each, their plays show clearly the dramatic 
decadence which soon went from bad to worse in the plays 
of Ford, Massinger, and Shirley. 

Conclusion. — Indeed, after the death of Shakespeare, the 
drama shows a steady decline. This was partly due to the 



THE RENAISSANCE 



61 



Puritan opposition, and partly the cause of that opposition. 
In Shakespeare's time, in spite of the patronage of Elizabeth, 
the Puritans had been able to keep the theaters outside the 
city limits of London. And after the accession of James, 
when the court became more corrupt and the Puritans more 
aggressive, the theater became the victim of the changing 
age. More and more it had to make its appeal to the in- 
creasingly corrupt taste of the court, and consequently the 
Puritan opposition became even more justifiable and more 
effective. The theaters were closed in 1642, and not opened 
again until the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. 

Suggested Readings 1 

Spenser : The Faerie Queene, Book I. 
Bacon: Essays. 

Palgrave : Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics, Book I. 

Shakespeare : A Midsummer Night 1 s Dream, Henry IV (first part), 
Henry V, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Julius Ccesar, Hamlet, 
Macbeth, The Tempest. 

Fletcher: The Faithful Shepherdess. (The Temple Dramatists.) 

1 Except where special editions are mentioned, the books are to be found 
in the Pocket Series of English Classics published by The Macmillan Com- 
pany. 



CHAPTER IV 



THE PURITAN AGE 

The Puritan Age. — The years which followed the death of 
Shakespeare were years of national division, controversy, 
and conflict. Elizabeth had ruled firmly but wisely, and 
had kept her people reasonably well united and loyal. King 
James, however, was of a different temperament: ridiculous, 
cowardly, tyrannical. He insisted at all times upon the 
doctrine of the divine right of kings, maintaining that the 
people had no right to interfere with his actions, however 
unjust those actions might be. He and his son, Charles I, 
came into sharp conflict with the leaders of the people, es- 
pecially with the Puritans. The different views of life repre- 
sented by the court party and the Puritan party had been 
marked even in Elizabeth's time. In the time of James and 
Charles the two parties came into open conflict, resulting 
in civil war (1642-1648). The Puritans under Oliver 
Cromwell were victorious, Charles I was beheaded, and the 
Stuart family was driven into exile. Such troublesome times 
are not favorable to great literature. 

The Cavalier Poets. — There were three classes of people 
in the state, however, whose ideas of life found their way into 
literature : the court party, the party of the established 
church, and the Puritan party. To the court party belonged 
the so-called Cavalier poets, lyric poets who wrote in a light, 
fanciful vein on rather trivial subjects. The most important 

62 



THE PURITAN AGE 



63 



of these poets were Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace. A 
characteristic example of their poetry is Lovelace's To 
Althea from Prison. The first and last stanzas follow: 

" When love with unconfined wings 

Hovers within my gates, 
And my divine Althea brings 

To whisper at the grates ; 
When I lie tangled in her hair 

And fetter' d to her eye, 
The Gods that wanton in the air 

Know no such liberty 

* * * * * 

Stone walls do not a prison make, 

Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds innocent and quiet take 

That for an hermitage ; 
If I have freedom in my love 

And in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above, 

Enjoy such liberty." 

Robert Herrick (1591-1674) may also be classified with 
the Cavalier poets, though he was also a religious poet and 
a poet of Nature. The Litany is his famous religious poem, 
somber and melancholy in tone; Corinna's Maying is his 
most notable lyric of country life. His lighter verse, which 
links him to the Cavalier group, is well illustrated by his 
Counsel to Young Girls. 

" Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 
Old Time is still a-flying. 
And this same flower that smiles to-day 
To-morrow will be dying. 

" The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun, 
The higher he's a-getting 



64 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The sooner will his race be run 
And nearer he's to setting. 

" The age is best which is the first, 
When youth and blood are warmer, 
But being spent, the worse, and worst 
Times, still succeed the former. 

" Then be not coy, but use your time ; 
And while ye may, go marry : 
For having lost but once your prime, 
You may forever tarry/ ' 

The Metaphysical School. — Light and fanciful lyric 
poetry, however, did not represent the prevailing mood of 
the age. The chief interest was in religion of a mystical and 
melancholy kind. The literature of both the Anglicans and 
the Puritans represent it, though the Puritan habit of mind 
was not distinctly literary. Among the religious poets, 
the most important were Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan. 
With these may be classed Crashaw, a Roman Catholic. 
John Donne was the Dean of St. PauPs in London, a preacher 
of power, and a poet with flashes of genius. " His poetry is 
full of strange, interrupted music and of vivid passion which 
breaks in jets and flashes through a veil of obscure thought 
and tortured imagery. In these moments of illumination, it 
becomes wonderfully poignant and direct, heart-searching in 
its simple human accents, with an originality and force for 
which we look in vain among the clear and fluent melodies 
of Elizabethan lyrics. " 1 The ordinary reader, however, 
finds Donne obscure. His poetry is full of fanciful conceits, 
strained metaphors, and difficult comparisons. So intellect- 
ually subtle is the style that Dr. Johnson nicknamed Donne 
and his followers "the metaphysical school." 

1 Moody and Lovett, A History of English Literature, p. 144. 



THE PURITAN AGE 



65 



Herbert and Crashaw. — The greatest of Donne's fol- 
lowers were George Herbert (1593-1632) and Richard 
Crashaw (1613 ?-1650?). Herbert's poetry is prevailingly 
intellectual, though of earnest and sincere piety ; Crashaw' s 
is ecstatic and mystical. Crashaw had the religious fervor 
of the Middle Ages, and the controversies of the seventeenth 
century naturally drove him back to the mother church. 
His most characteristic poems are The Flaming Heart and 
Hymn to Saint Theresa. Herbert was a typical church of 
England man. His volume of poems, The Temple, reflects 
the prevailing spiritual agitation and melancholy of the 
seventeenth century. The Gifts of God is one of his most 
notable poems : 

" When God at first made Man, 
Having a glass of blessings standing by ; 
Let us (said He) pour on him all we can : 
Let the world's riches, which dispersed lie, 
Contract into a span. 

" So strength first made a way ; 
Then beauty flow'd, then wisdom, honor, pleasure ; 
When almost all was out, God made a stay, 
Perceiving that alone, of all his treasure, 
Rest in the bottom lay. 

" For if I should (said He) 
Bestow this jewel also on My creature, 
He would adore My gifts instead of Me, 
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature, 
So both should losers be. 

" Yet let him keep the rest, 
But keep them with repining restlessness, 
Let him be rich and weary, that at least, 
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness 

May toss him to My breast." 



66 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Abraham Cowley (1618-1667) also requires mention in 
connection with the " metaphysical school." His contem- 
poraries considered him the greatest of poets, though pos- 
terity has not confirmed the judgment. The Mistress, a 
series of love poems, and Davideis, an heroic poem of King 
David of Israel, were once famous, but are now rarely read. 
He was much quoted, however, in the Classical Age; and 
he gave his name to the verse form known as the " Cowleyan 
Ode/' " a series of verse groups of unequal length and ir- 
regular structure," adapted from the old Pindaric ode. 

Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy." — Among the prose 
writers, the most important were Robert Burton (1577- 
1640), Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), and Sir Thomas Browne 
(1605-1682). Robert Burton's famous book, The Anatomy 
of Melancholy, analyzes the prevailing national mood as a 
disease. It discusses the causes, the manifestations, and the 
cure of melancholy. Part I treats a somewhat heterogeneous 
list of causes : (1) God, (2) spirits, devils, etc., (3) witches 
and magicians, (4) old age, (5) heredity, (6) bad diet, (7) idle- 
ness, (8) anger, (9) ambition, (10) study, etc. Part II dis- 
cusses the treatment of these various causes. Part III is 
devoted entirely to the causes and cures of love melan- 
choly. 

Jeremy Taylor. — Taylor's most influential work was 
Holy Living and Holy Dying, a noble and tolerant book 
widely read both in Taylor's own day and since. Hazlitt 
says of it : " It is a divine pastoral. He writes to the faith- 
ful followers of Christ as a shepherd pipes to his flock. . . . 
He makes life a procession to the grave, but crowns it with 
garlands, and rains sacrificial roses on its path." Taylor 
has been called " the Shakespeare of divines," and " a kind 
of Spenser in a cassock." His style is richly poetic and 
melodious, though often over-fanciful and diffuse. 



THE PURITAN AGE 



67 



Sir Thomas Browne: " Religio Medici " — Sir Thomas 
Browne is known chiefly for his Religio Medici, an expression 
of his own personal religious beliefs. The book is melan- 
choly and mystical, like most other books of the period. 
" He (Browne) loves to stand before the face of the Eternal 
and the Infinite until the shows of life fade away, and he is 
filled with a passionate quietude and humility." His grand 
and solemn style is at times very impressive. Some mod- 
ern readers, however, consider it " desultory and magnilo- 
quent." 

Walton's " The Compleat Angler." — Isaak Walton (1593- 
1683) is a writer who defies classification. Instead of dis- 
cussing melancholy, like most of his contemporaries, he 
found a practical cure for it. He went fishing. His book, 
The Compleat Angler, has no touches of melancholy. The 
book begins in the form of conversations between a falconer, 
a hunter, and an angler ; but the falconer soon drops out of 
the story, and the angler, true to nature, does most of the 
talking. The style is charming, showing a close and sympa- 
thetic observation of woods and fields and streams, a love of 
simple and wholesome pleasures, and a kindliness of spirit 
as delightful as it is rare. The angler says, " I envy not him 
that eats better meat than I do ; nor him that is richer, or 
that wears better clothes than I do ; I envy nobody but him, 
and him only, that catches more fish than I do." This 
book seems out of place in the seventeenth century. 

The Puritans. — The stern temper of the Puritan mind 
would seem antagonistic to literature ; yet two of the most 
widely known writers of the time were Puritans. Milton 
and Bunyan are still read by people who hardly know the 
names of the other writers of the period. Macaulay has 
pointed out that Milton's cast of mind was not strictly 
Puritan. He belonged to the Puritan faith, and had the 



68 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



intense religious enthusiasm and exaltation of the Puritans ; 
but he was " perfectly free from the contagion of their fran- 
tic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, 
their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure." He 
hated tyranny, but he possessed the mental graces of the 
Cavalier. His tastes were refined ; his sense of the value of 
literature strong. He united in himself the virtues of the 
Puritan and the graces of the cavalier. 

Milton's First Period. — Milton's work naturally divides it- 
self into three periods : (1) the period before the outbreak of 
civil war in 1642 ; (2) the period of the Revolution and the 
Commonwealth from 1642-1660, and (3) the period imme- 
diately following the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. To 
the first period belong the Minor Poems, notably U Allegro, 
II Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. After receiving his de- 
gree from Cambridge, Milton retired to a country place at 
Horton, and devoted himself to the pursuit of poetry. The 
graceful and charming qualities of his mind here found free 
play. U Allegro and II Penseroso represent two moods of 
the poet, the keen delight in mirth of a light yet wholesome 
character, and the more serious delight in reflection, music, 
and religious musing. Comus, a mask, shows also the 
brighter side of Milton's character, the side which is least 
Puritanic. 

Lycidas is universally considered one of his most finished 
poems. It is a lament for the death of a college acquaint- 
ance, Edward King, who was drowned in the Irish Channel. 
Its literary form is the conventional pastoral. Milton and 
King are represented as shepherds who tend their sheep and 
play rustic music. But the poem is not intended to repre- 
sent real country life ; it is only a translation of the experi- 
ence of the two into pastoral imagery. For instance when 
Milton says : 



THE PURITAN AGE 



69 



" For we were nursed upon the self-same hill 
Fed the same flock, by fountain, shade and rill," 

he means that he and King went to college together (Christ's 
College, Cambridge) and engaged in the same studies and 
pursuits. Every detail in the poem does not have a hidden 
meaning, but the conventional pastoral imagery is used in a 
general way to express the experience of the two men. 
Milton also expresses in the poem his idea of the state of 
literature and of the church. The poem also illustrates the 
rich color and varied music of Milton's early verse. 

The Second Period. " Areopagitica." — During the 
second period, Milton wrote no poetry except occasional 
sonnets, for much of his time was occupied with political 
controversies. He held the position of Secretary for Foreign 
Tongues under the Puritan government. Most of his official 
writing was in Latin. Only occasionally did he produce a 
piece of genuine English prose literature. Such is the Areo- 
pagitica, a vigorous plea for freedom of the press, written in 
an elaborate, highly figurative, and melodious style. As a 
whole this period of Milton's life has comparatively little 
literary significance. The writing of one of his controversial 
pamphlets made him blind. 

The Third Period. — To the third period belong Paradise 
Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Samson 
Agonistes is a tragedy in the Greek manner, based on the 
story in the sixteenth chapter of Judges. Paradise Regained 
treats of Christ's temptation in the wilderness (Matthew iv). 
Neither of them equals in importance Paradise Lost, Milton's 
greatest achievement. 

" Paradise Lost." — From boyhood, Milton felt himself 
dedicated to the task of writing a great literary masterpiece, 
and the theme of Paradise Lost was in his mind for many 
years. At first he thought of making a drama of it and 



70 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



sketched out a plan on the Greek model ; but this idea was 
abandoned for the epic form before he had written much on 
the theme. Paradise Lost is one of the greatest poems in 
the English language. To be sure, the idea of the universe 
with the earth in the center, surrounded by a series of con- 
centric spheres in which the planets and stars are fixed, is 
totally wrong, as possibly Milton knew ; but the poem re- 
mains great because its imagination is so wonderful and its 
verse so nearly perfect. Milton thought his minor poems 
were nothing but literary exercises compared with Paradise 
Lost. Of this poem he thought highly, though he aimed 
to be satisfied with nothing short of perfection. No one 
since has been able to sustain so grand a style. 

A Literary Epic. — Paradise Lost is a literary epic like 
Virgil's JEneid, as distinguished from a popular epic like 
The Iliad or Beowulf. It is not simple story, not a direct 
picture of life. Milton has a problem to discuss. He says : 

"What in me is dark 
Illumine ; what is low raise and support ; 
That to the highth of this great argument 
I may assert Eternal Providence 
And justify the ways of God to men." 

The poem is a great artist's idea about the problem of evil 
in the world. It treats the revolt of Satan and the angels 
from God ; their overthrow and the casting of them into Hell ; 
their plan of revenge by corrupting man, whom God had 
created and placed in paradise ; the temptation and fall of 
Adam and Eve ; and the expulsion from paradise. At the 
end the outcasts are comforted by the promise of atonement 
through the coming of Christ. Adam is the hero ; but Satan 
is the more interesting character, perhaps because he is 
more human. 



THE PURITAN AGE 



71 



The Greatness of the Poem. — The poem is conceived and 
executed on a grand scale. The scene of the action com- 
prises heaven, hell, and the entire universe between. The 
characters are God, the angels, fallen spirits, and man. The 
imagery is vivid and sublime ; the flow of the verse, stately 
and harmonious. The lasting interest in the poem lies in 
the colossal images, exalted thought, and wonderful melody. 

" Pilgrim's Progress. " — John Bunyan (1628-1688) was 
another Puritan who wrote enduring literature. He was a 
tinker by trade, and had little or no education; but he 
knew his Bible almost by heart, and was an artist by instinct. 
His religious experience was exceedingly vivid and dramatic. 
Intense religious feeling, vital imagination, and a thorough 
knowledge of the simple style of the Bible made him a great 
writer. Pilgrim's Progress is one of the most perfect alle- 
gories ever written. All the difficulties jmd^riumphs of the 
Christian life jire here represented in story. At the beginning, 
Christian sets out from the city of Destruction to make 
his way to the Holy City. He carries on hi s bac k the b urden 
of his sins and fears. Evangelist tells him the way to go and 
he pushes onward in spite of the petitions of his family, his 
neighbors, and his friends. Scene after scene follows, 
picturing spiritual experiences. Christian falls into the 
Slough of Despond, travels into the Valley of Humiliation, 
climbs the Hill of Difficulty, has a fight with the demon 
Apollyon, is thrown along with Hopeful into the dungeon of 
Doubting Castle by Giant Despair. At length, after many 
difficulties, he comes to the city of All Delight, where he is 
welcomed by a company of angels that come singing down 
the street. Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into 
seventy-five languages and dialects, and has perhaps been 
more widely read than any other book in the English lan- 
guage except the Bible. 



72 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Suggested Readings 1 

Palgrave : Golden Treasury, Book II. 
Walton : The Compleat Angler. (Everyman's Library.) 
Milton : U Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas, Sonnets, Par- 
adise Lost, Books I and II. 

Bunyan : Pilgrim's Progress. 

1 Except where special editions are mentioned, the books are to be found 
in the Pocket Series of English Classics published by The Macmillan Com- 
pany. 



CHAPTER V 



CLASSICISM 

Characteristics of the Age. — The restoration of the Stuarts 
in 1660 brought a strong reaction against Puritanism. The 
upper classes, especially, had grown weary of the Puritanic 
restraints, and quickly adopted the new ideas, new fashions, 
and new moral standards which the gay court of Charles II 
introduced from France. In their hatred of hypocrisy and 
cant they went even further : they set aside not only the 
restraints of Puritanism, but also all that is emotional, 
mysterious, and vital in religion. Decent conformity to a 
conventional religion was' all that could be asked. Many 
rejected the personal God with whom the Puritan had 
communed face to face, and made for themselves a god by 
means of the reason alone, neglecting the revelations of the 
Bible. These deists, as they were called, belonged to the 
established English church, but they defended the church, 
not on the ground that it represented the true faith, but be- 
cause it was an established institution and helped to maintain 
law and order. Moral standards were low. Corruption in 
public life was almost universal. Walpole maintained his 
power for twenty years by open and notorious bribery. Polite 
society gathered about the gaming tables, where immense 
sums were lost and won ; or frequented the theaters, where 
plays were enacted, so immoral that no one can read them 
to-day without surprise and disgust. To be sure, there was 
a certain veneer and polish, a superficial refinement, but at 
heart the age was coarse and corrupt. 

73 



74 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



The intellectual life was brilliant rather than profound. 
There was no effort, as with the Puritans, to solve the deep 
mysteries of life ; no effort, as with the Elizabethans, to 
reach out beyond the limits of ordinary experience and explore 
unknown worlds. Men were content to make what they could 
out of ordinary experiences through the exercise of reason 
and common sense. The center of interest was in the coffee- 
houses and clubs. Here came, daily, groups of politicians 
and literary men to discuss the gossip of the town, the newest 
drama, the latest book, the most startling gains and losses 
at the gaming table, the latest news of the drawing-rooms, 
the probable fortunes of political parties. There was about it 
all, however, a great intellectual zest. Daily discussion made 
the minds of men keen, discriminating, brilliant. 

Characteristics of the Literature. — The change in social, 
moral, and intellectual standards brought a corresponding 
change in literature. Instead of a literature of enthusiasm, 
emotion, and mystery, or of mysticism and melancholy, 
we have a literature of reason, appealing almost exclusively 
to the intellect, a literature of the town life consisting 
largely of wit, satire, and travesty. There were dramas 
like those of Congreve, witty and licentious, the direct 
expression of a social life devoid of moral standards. There 
were essays like those in The Spectator, comments on life 
by the frequenters of the drawing-rooms, the coffee-house, 
and the club. There was didactic and satirical verse like 
that of Pope, clever, witty, and faultlessly regular, but never 
profound; fanciful, but not imaginative. Writers thought 
less of what they said than of how they said it. Every piece 
of writing was severely tested by the set rules of art which 
the French under the leadership of Malherbe and Boileau 
had formulated from the study of the classical writers and of 
the Italian scholars. Milton, Shakespeare, and Spenser were 



CLASSICISM 



75 



neglected. The result was a clever and finished but not 
profoundly imaginative literature. 

(a) THE DRAMA 

Classical Ideas. — The characteristics of the period are 
well illustrated in the drama. The theaters had been closed 
by the Puritans in 1642 ; but the pressure for dramatic enter- 
tainments had been so great that, before the end of the 
Commonwealth, permission had been given to Davenant 
to present his operatic drama, The Siege of Rhodes. This 
play, Dry den claims, was the beginning of the " heroic 
drama/ ' the first type of drama to develop when the theaters 
were opened after the Restoration. Dryden himself was the 
principal exponent of this kind of play. He did not follow 
the traditions of Shakespeare and the romantic drama of 
the Elizabethan time. He followed, rather, Ben Jonson's 
classical ideas enforced and modified by the rules of dramatic 
composition which had been formulated by the French 
critics and exemplified by Corneille and other French dram- 
atists. He tried to conform to the requirements of the three 
unities, i.e., that the action should be confined to a single 
place, that the time represented should not exceed twenty- 
four hours, and that the action should have a clearly defined 
unity. Dryden's principal heroic plays are The Indian 
Emperor (1665) and The Conquest of Granada (1670). They 
did not altogether satisfy the new classical interest in re- 
straint, for the characters were pushed into an extravagance 
of passion which caused the plays to be caricatured by the 
Duke of Buckingham in a mock-heroic play, called The 
Rehearsal. They were, however, prevailingly classical in tone. 

Dryden's early plays were written in the heroic couplet, 
two iambic pentameter lines united by rime; but in his 
later work rimed verse was abandoned. All for Love 



76 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



(1678) ; a rehandling of the story of Antony and Cleopatra, 
was written in blank verse. This play is considered the best 
of Dryden's tragedies. 

Thomas Otway (1651-1685), an unsuccessful actor who 
turned to the writing of plays, produced two tragedies, which 
are nearly, if not quite, equal to any of Dryden's. They are 
The Orphan (1680) and Venice Preserved (1682). The latter 
held the stage for many years, and was considered a model 
for the writing of tragedies. Tragedy did not flourish, 
however, in the classical period. Even Addison's Cato and 
Johnson's Irene are notable largely because their authors 
became famous in other kinds of writing. 

Comedy was more in accord with the spirit of the time, 
and reflects the time in fashions, manners, and speech. The 
prevailing taste was for love intrigues developed by means of 
brilliant dialogue. George Etheredge, an Englishman edu- 
cated in Paris and familiar with the works of Moliere, was the 
first to write plays of this kind. He was followed by William 
Wycherley (1640-1715), whose most important play is 
The Plain Dealer (1674), and by the more brilliant William 
Congreve (1670-1729), whose masterpieces were Love for 
Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700). All of these 
plays are reckless and cynical, expressing the immoral at- 
mosphere of the corrupt court of the Restoration. This 
gross immorality called forth in 1698 the vigorous protest of 
Jeremy Collier in a Short View of the Profaneness and Im- 
morality of the English Stage, but the coarseness continued 
in the plays of John Vanbrugh (1666-1726) and to an extent 
in the work of George Farquhar (1678-1707). After the 
turn of the century, however, new forces began to work, 
making for morality and decent living; and in Richard 
Steele's plays comedy comes into alliance with these forces. 
The later comedy of the eighteenth century, represented 



CLASSICISM 



77 



by Goldsmith (1728-1774) and Sheridan (1751-1816), retains 
the brilliant dialogue without the gross immorality of the 
Restoration plays. Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer and 
Sheridan's The Rivals and The School for Scandal have held 
the stage down to the present time. Tony Lumpkin, the 
loutish squire of She Stoops to Conquer, Mrs. Malaprop and 
Bob Acres in The Rivals, and Lady Teazle in The School 
for Scandal are still familiar to theater-goers. Their sparkling 
dialogue is a never failing source of enjoyment. In these 
plays we have an amusing mock world, light, trifling, and 
frivolous, but not fundamentally and flagrantly immoral. 

(6) NON-DRAMATIC POETRY 

Lyric Poetry. — The poetry of classicism — as might 
be expected in an age in which reason and common sense 
were emphasized at the expense of imagination and emotion 
— was for the most part satiric, didactic, and mock-heroic. 
There was some lyric verse of a high order, Dryden's Alex- 
ander's Feast for example, a fine ode on the power of music ; 
but for the most part the poetry consisted of light society 
verse, poems of political and religious controversy, and poetic 
literary criticism. 

Political Satire. — Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel 
and Mac Flecknoe are typical examples of the satiric verse. 
The former is a political satire. While Charles II was king, 
the court and country were divided, on the matter of the 
succession, between the partisans of the king's brother James, 
who was a Papist, and the adherents of the king's illegitimate 
son, the Duke of Monmouth. The famous Earl of Shaftes- 
bury was a partisan of Monmouth, and pushed his claims 
vigorously before the people and parliament. Dryden, in 
adherence to James, wrote Absalom and Achitophel as a 
satire on the agitation in behalf of Monmouth. He told 



78 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



the old story of Absalom's revolt against King David in such 
a way that Absalom was clearly understood to be the Duke 
of Monmouth ; Achitophel, the Earl of Shaftesbury ; David, 
King Charles II. All the characters, indeed, and all the events 
have a direct relation to Dryden's own time. Mac Flecknoe 
was an attack upon the poet Shadwell who had entered the 
controversy as a champion of Shaftesbury and the Whigs. 

"Hudibras." — Another satire quite as popular was Samuel 
Butler's Hudibras, a scurrilous mock romance directed 
against the hypocrisy, intolerance, and cant of the Puritans. 
It was remarkably popular at the court of King Charles II. 
The king is said to have carried a copy about with him con- 
stantly. A short extract will show its burlesque tone. 

" He was in logic a great critic, 
Profoundly skilled in analytic ; 
He could distinguish, and divide 
A hair 'twixt south and southwest side ; 
On either which he would dispute, 
Confute, change hands, and still confute ; 
He'd undertake to prove, by force 
Of argument, a man's no horse ; 
He'd run in debt by disputation, 
And pay with ratiocination. 

" For he was of that stubborn crew 
Of errant saints, whom all men grant 
To be the true Church Militant ; 
Such as do build their faith upon 
The holy text of pike and gun ; 
Decide all controversies by 
Infallible artillery ; 
And prove their doctrine orthodox 
By apostolic blows and knocks ; 
Compound for sins they are inclined to, 
By damning those they have no mind to." 



CLASSICISM 



79 



Pope's Satires. — Pope's most famous satires are The 
Dunciad and the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. The Dunciad 
is directed against Pope's literary rivals. The dullards, the 
pedants, and the bad poets are presented in ridiculous situa- 
tions. The poem is brilliant, but not judicious, for Pope 
satirized every one against whom he had the slightest per- 
sonal spite. The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot contains the 
famous clever but unfair description of Addison : 

" Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires ; 
Blest with each talent, and each art to please, 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease : 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, 
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend, 
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged ; 
Like Cato, give his little senate laws, 
And sit attentive to his own applause ; 
While wits and templars every sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise — 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ? " 

Later in the century came the less bitter, but none the 
less interesting Retaliation by Oliver Goldsmith. The 
poet gives amusing pictures of David Garrick, Edmund 



80 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other famous members of 
Dr. Johnson's literary club. 

Social satires also were popular. The best is Pope's 
Rape of the Lock, a mock-heroic poem on the artificial society 
of Queen Anne's time. The theme was suggested by the rude 
behavior of Lord Petre in cutting a lock of hair from the 
head of Miss Fennor at a card party at Hampton. The 
poem pokes delightful fun at the society belle, and is a clever 
parody of the heroic style in poetry. Dr. Johnson's London 
and The Vanity of Human Wishes are in the manner of 
Juvenal's Latin satires. Goldsmith's Deserted Village is an 
emotional and sympathetic account of the sufferings of 
the poor. This poem is classical in form, but in its general 
feeling anticipates the romantic period. The same may be 
said of Crabbe's Village. 

The didactic poetry is of less interest. The most important 
examples are Pope's Essay on Man and his Essay on Criti- 
cism. The Essay on Man is an explanation of man's rela- 
tion to God and the universe, based on reason and common 
sense rather than .on revelation and faith. The first epistle 
discusses man's place in the universe ; the second, his indi- 
vidual nature ; the third, his relation to society ; the fourth, 
his attitude toward happiness. The Essay on Criticism is a 
versified statement of the ideas about literature and the rules 
of criticism which had been formulated by the classical 
school along the lines suggested by the French critics. The 
poem sets forth the artistic principles of the time in finished 
form. 

The Closed Couplet. — Most of the poetry was written in 
" the closed couplet," which consists of two iambic pen- 
tameter lines united by rime. The thought is for the most 
part confined to the limits of the couplet. This verse had 
been used before in English literature, especially by Waller 



CLASSICISM 



81 



and Cowley in the middle of the seventeenth century, but 
not until the time of Pope did it reach perfect artistic finish, 
and not until then was the principle established that the 
thought should be complete at the end of each couplet. 
The closed couplet became the conventional meter of the 
classicists. 

(c) THE ESSAY AND THE PAMPHLET 

Periodical Literature. — It was to be expected that an age 
of reason and common sense — an age in which the principal 
interests were in social life and in political controversy — 
should develop a literature of prose even more important 
than its poetic literature. Indeed the eighteenth century is 
distinctly a century of prose. Most of this prose literature, 
with the exception of novels, appeared in the form of periodi- 
cals and pamphlets. The most important periodicals were 
The Tatler and The Spectator, edited by Addison and Steele ; 
The Examiner, conducted by Swift ; The Rambler and The 
Idler, edited by Dr. Johnson ; and The Gentleman's Magazine 
and the London Magazine, the forerunners of the famous 
Edinburgh, Quarterly, and Blackwood 1 s. 

Addison. — The Tatler and The Spectator set the fashion 
and became the models in this kind of writing. The chief 
aim was to make fun of vices and follies and elevate the 
morals of the age. Addison in particular had a moral purpose, 
not very profound, perhaps, but representing a distinct 
reaction against the profligacy and excess of the years im- 
mediately following the Restoration. He directed his satire 
against the coarse vices of gambling, drinking, swearing, 
dueling, practical joking, indecent conversation. He was 
the apostle of politeness and refinement, of conventional 
morality. He wrote also literary criticism, such as the famous 
series on Milton, and the essay on The Ballad of Chevy Chace* 



82 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Above all he developed that series of character sketches 
which is almost a novel, The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 
He was perhaps the most graceful and winning humorist 
of the time. 

Richard Steele (1672-1729), who has the credit of founding 
The Tatler and who was intimately associated with Addison 
in editing The Spectator, was a more sympathetic writer 
than Addison, but not so strong of character nor so keen of 
intellect. Indeed there is a marked discrepancy between 
his personal life and the tenor of much of his writings. 
However, there is a sincere human quality about his incon- 
sistencies which gives his work a peculiar charm. His 
style is more careless, flexible, and free than that of Addison. 

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) had a more vigorous mind than 
either Addison or Steele, and in his way was quite as impor- 
tant a personage. He wrote for the periodicals, especially 
political periodicals, and was the editor of The Examiner, 
an influential Tory paper. Much of his writing, however, 
appeared in the form of pamphlets. His distinguishing 
characteristic is his pessimism. He had a thoroughgoing 
contempt for human nature and was most bitter in his satire. 
He liked to play practical jokes to show his contempt for 
men. Once he dispersed a crowd which had gathered to see 
an eclipse by sending a message that according to the Dean's 
order the eclipse would be put off for a day. Another practi- 
cal joke was directed against a man named Partridge, who 
issued an almanac containing predictions of events to take 
place during the next year. To expose Partridge, Swift 
published, over the name Isaac Bickerstaff, Predictions for 
the Year 1708, in which he predicted the death of Partridge 
on the 29th of March, and, on the 30th of March, followed 
the prediction with an account of Partridge's last days and 
death. Of course Partridge insisted that he was still alive, 



CLASSICISM 



83 



but Bickerstaff replied with various arguments in the manner 
of Partridge's almanac, proving that the impostor was cer- 
tainly dead. Partridge became the laughing-stock of the 
town. 

Swift's Satirical Method. — Swift's writings are, for the 
most part, both earnest and playful, and often full of very 
bitter irony. The Battle of the Books is a humorous dis- 
cussion of the comparative merits of ancient and modern 
writers, suggested by the controversy in which Swift's 
patron, Sir William Temple, was then deeply engaged. 
The Tale of the Tub, a fierce satire on religion, is, on the 
face of it, the story of three stupid brothers quarreling over 
their inheritance. Each of the three has received from his 
father a coat with minute direction for its care and use. The 
coat is Christian truth. The brothers, Peter, Martin, and 
Jack, represent the Church of Rome, the Lutherans, and 
the Calvinists. The way in which the sons evade their 
father's will by changing the fashion of their garments 
constitutes the satire on religious sects. The Modest Proposal 
for preventing the poor in Ireland from becoming burden- 
some contains the sarcastically cruel suggestion that the 
children be killed and eaten like pigs and sheep. This 
would create a market for the largest and, under the existing 
circumstances, most useless product of the poor. It would 
make children an asset instead of a bill of expense. It would 
change the financial burden of the poor into a profitable 
business. 

" Gulliver's Travels." — Swift's most widely known book 
is Gulliver's Travels. It may be read with interest merely as 
a story of adventurous journeys to Lilliput and Brobding- 
nag and to the country of the Houyhnhnms. Many children 
have been charmed with it, who knew nothing of its hidden 
meaning. Beneath the story, however, the mature reader 



84 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



sees a bitter satire on human nature. In the voyage to 
Lilliput human motives are set to work on a small scale 
for the purpose of suggesting the littleness and meanness of 
human life. In the voyage to Brobdingnag, people larger 
than men are described and the actions of ordinary human 
beings made petty and insignificant in comparison. In the 
land of the Houyhnhnms horses are the rulers and masters ; 
man is in servitude and degradation. The picture of the 
Yahoo, the human beast, shows Swift's contempt for man 
at its worst. 

Swift was often coarse and to some people disgusting; 
but his sincere, fierce hatred of sham and affectation made his 
criticism keen and vigorous. His style, too, often has a di- 
rectness and simplicity which are truly admirable. Our best 
source of information about the man himself as an active, 
successful man of affairs is the daily account of his doings 
which he himself wrote in his Journal to Stella. 

Dr. Johnson. — In the middle of the eighteenth century 
Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was the most conspicuous 
literary figure. Thanks to BoswelFs detailed and gossipy 
account, we know Johnson more intimately than almost any 
other man of letters; a striking and original person, out- 
wardly huge, awkward, vulgar, contentious, an eccentric 
" old bear " ; inwardly a brave, heroic soul, battling man- 
fully with poverty, disease, and the fear of death, yet never 
losing faith in God or in himself. This vulgar eccentric be- 
came a social lion, the welcome associate of artists, scholars, 
actors, and literary men, the acknowledged dictator of an 
elegant age, one of the most learned men of his time. 

Range of the Work. — His range of work is noteworthy. 
Besides the poetry and drama already mentioned, he contrib- 
uted essays to The Rambler and The Idler in the fashion of 
Addison, though without Addison's grace of style. He 



CLASSICISM 



85 



compiled a Dictionary of the English Language, whimsical 
in places rather than scholarly, but important as a pioneer 
book of its kind. In a single week he wrote Rasselas, Prince 
of Abyssinia, the reflections of the author in story form. 
He edited the works of Shakespeare; and, in spite of his ' 
scant knowledge of the sixteenth-century literature, did it so 
well that many of his sensible comments still appear in anno- 
tated editions of the plays. His best and most lasting work 
is his Lives of the Poets, brief accounts of the authors with 
critical comments on their writings. His criticisms are not 
always just, for Johnson was a man of prejudices ; but most 
of the " lives " are well worth reading as the honest though 
prejudiced judgment of a powerful mind. 

Johnson's Style. — Johnson's style is in marked contrast 
with that of Addison. He praised Addison's style, saying 
that " the person who would secure a perfect English style 
must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." But 
either Johnson did not follow his own advice or did not 
profit by the study, for his style is often pompous and heavy, 
crowded with Latin derivatives, and full of long and involved 
sentences. To be sure these long sentences with all their 
modifiers often have an effective rhythmic eloquence; and 
Johnson could be terse and simple when he chose, as his con- 
versation related by Boswell and some of his later literary 
productions amply show. Yet in general his style is exceed- 
ingly artificial and bookish. 

Edmund Burke. — One of the last of the eighteenth-cen- 
tury classicists was Edmund Burke. His works have not 
found a large place in literature, because he gave his atten- 
tion to political affairs rather than to literary pursuits. He 
did not hold high political office, but was for long the brains 
of the Whig opposition to the efforts of George III to increase 
the royal prerogative. Most of his productions, therefore, are 



86 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



contributions to the literature of politics and government. 
His speeches on American Taxation (1774) and on Concilia- 
tion with America (1775) give his ideas on the American 
Revolution. The Nabob of Arcot's Debts and the Impeach- 
ment of Warren Hastings discuss political affairs in India. 
Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) and Letters on a 
Regicide Peace (1796) are his best contributions to the litera- 
ture of the French Revolution. He was a practical man of 
reason and common sense, and therefore naturally a classicist. 
He believed in established institutions and in the slow 
development of civilization. He shunned what he thought 
were impractical doctrines and theories. He was against 
coercion in America simply because he thought coercion im- 
practicable ; and he opposed the French Revolution because 
it broke connections with the past and was based upon 
theory and not upon experience. He believed safety lay in 
stemming the tide of revolution in Europe, and therefore did 
what he could to marshal the forces of reaction, contrib- 
uting much to the final English success at Trafalgar and 
Waterloo. 

Romantic Tendencies in Burke and Johnson. — Standing 
thus for the reasonable and the practical, he allied himself 
with the classicists in literature ; yet he was not an uncom- 
promising adherent of that school. The breadth of his sym- 
pathy and the fervor of his imagination gave him a kinship 
with the rising romanticists. Both Burke and Johnson, 
indeed, show signs of the new influences. In general they 
both followed in the way of the classicists, and championed 
the old ideas of art ; but in critical ideas Johnson was not so 
thorough a formalist as his immediate predecessors, accept- 
ing, for instance, only with considerable modification and 
reservation the doctrine of the three dramatic unities, as the 
preface to his edition of Shakespeare clearly shows; and 



CLASSICISM 



87 



Burke departed from the practice of the classicists in 
mingling with his statistics and his philosophy brilliant 
flights of imagination and powerful emotional appeals. 

(d) THE NOVEL 

The Periodicals. — The classical age of reason and com- 
mon sense developed a type of prose fiction radically different 
from the old romances of chivalry, which were far too extrav- 
agant to appeal to a matter-of-fact age. The new tendency 
is seen in the periodical literature as early as The Tatler and 
The Spectator, The character sketching, at first abstract 
and general, becomes individual, personal, lifelike. Brief 
stories appear under such titles as The Civil Husband (Tatler, 
No. 53) and The Story of Miss Betty Cured of Her Vanity 
(Guardian, No. 159). The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, a 
series of essays united by common characters and by a con- 
tinuous story, is a real forerunner of the novel of life. 

Picaresque Stories. — Another influence came from the 
Spanish picaresque stories, autobiographical accounts of 
the vagrant experiences of unscrupulous rogues, who mingle 
in real life, lying, cheating, and stealing, and who tell of their 
rogueries with impudent candor. Daniel Defoe's Colonel 
Jack is a typical English story of this kind. The hero is of 
gentle blood, but is brought up among thieves and pick- 
pockets, with no adequate conception of right and wrong. 
He is kidnapped and taken to Virginia, where he rises to 
influence. He returns to England, a merchant, goes to the 
wars, behaves bravely, gets preferment, and is finally made 
colonel of a regiment. The Journal of the Plague Year 
illustrates the same kind of writing. Defoe had a way of 
making all his stories marvelously real by the massing of 
details and by a simple matter-of-fact style. His Robinson 
Crusoe has been one of the most widely read of English books. 



88 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Swift's Gulliver's Travels shows this type of story adapted to 
purposes of satire. 

The Love Story. — Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was 
the first great writer of love stories. He was minute in the 
analysis of character, developed carefully the idea of plot, and 
emphasized sentiment. He began as a letter writer. One 
of his diversions as a young man was to write love letters 
for the young women of his neighborhood, all of whom seem 
to have made him their confidant in love affairs. Indeed he 
made a specialty of the feminine heart. His most famous 
book, Clarissa Harlowe, is a love story in the form of letters. 
It is most elaborately analytical. Every movement of 
Clarissa's mind, every flutter of her heart, is subjected to the 
most searching analysis and then discussed and rediscussed 
from every conceivable point of view. The plot movement is 
slow, but it is constant, and is developed to a high tension at 
the climax. In scenes of intense passion Richardson is at his 
best. His other stories are Pamela and Sir Charles Grandison. 

Henry Fielding (1707-1754) was a more genuine realist 
than Richardson. He knew more of life, and he knew it 
better. He began novel writing in protest against the 
moral pretensions and sentimentality of Richardson. The 
contrast is therefore marked. Richardson's novels are of 
the hothouse variety ; Fielding's have the vigor of the sun- 
shine and the air. 

Tom Jones is Fielding's most famous book. The story 
opens with the discovery of the hero as a new-born babe 
in the house of a virtuous gentleman, Mr. Allworthy. Here 
he grows up with Allworthy's nephew Blifel, who out of 
jealousy ruins Tom's reputation with his benefactor, and 
gets him turned out into the world. Meanwhile Tom has 
fallen in love with the daughter of a neighbor, Miss Sophia 
Western, who returns his love in spite of the opposition of 



CLASSICISM 



89 



her father. Tom travels to London, with many wayside 
adventures; he passes, not unscathed, through various 
temptations ; and finally, by the discovery of the secret of 
his birth and the revelation of BlifePs villainy, he is advanced 
to his happy fortune, the favor of Allworthy, and marriage 
with Sophia. The structure of the story is particularly 
noteworthy. The secret of Jones's parentage is skillfully 
kept from the reader till the end and then disclosed in a 
natural way. Cheap devices of plot, based on pure chance, 
are avoided. Conversations are direct, not reported. The 
scenes are localized and given a real background. Char- 
acter and incident are equalized. 

Other novels by Fielding are Joseph Andrews, Jonathan 
Wild, and Amelia. Fielding's work is often coarse, and his 
point of view worldly like the age. And since he cared 
nothing for spiritual things, his ideals are not high. Still he 
is always direct and sincere. His novels display genuine 
humanity. 

Smollett and Sterne. — Two other stories of wide repu- 
tation are Smollett's Humphrey Clinker and Sterne's Tristram 
Shandy. Humphrey Clinker is haphazard in plot and full 
of unpleasant incidents. The humor is of a savage sort, 
consisting largely of cruel practical jokes. The method 
of treatment is far less sympathetic than Fielding's. As a 
record of contemporary life and manners, however, the book 
has decided interest. Tristram Shandy can hardly be called 
a novel. It has no plan ; no beginning, no progress, no con- 
clusion. Sterne says, " I began it with no clear idea of what it 
was to turn out, only a design of shocking people and amusing 
myself." Sterne had absolutely no sense of propriety; and 
since his mind was incongruous and thoroughly sentimental, 
he naturally wrote a whimsical and immoral book. The 
characters, however, are so very real and have such distinc- 



90 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



tively human charm that the book is still read with interest 
in spite of its obvious faults. 

Goldsmith's " Vicar of Wakefield/ ' — One of the most 
delightful books of the period is Oliver Goldsmith's The 
Vicar of Wakefield. The plot is artlessly absurd, the situa- 
tions comical, the humor delightful, the style graceful. The 
wholesome optimism of the book is in marked contrast with 
the work of Sterne and of Swift, and not altogether character- 
istic of classicism. Goldsmith is not a realist ; he does not 
accept the world as it is ; he insists upon idealizing it. Nor 
does his story have to do with the social life of cities. It is 
an account of simple family life, and treats " the out-of-doors " 
with real feeling. Indeed Goldsmith has much in common 
with the new romantic tendencies. The Vicar of Wakefield 
belongs to the literature of transition. 

O) CRITICISM 

Criticism. — The ideas of the classicists about literature 
are expressed in their critical writings. The earliest impor- 
tant work is Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy. In his de- 
fense of contemporary English writers, he takes for granted 
that they are to be judged in general by the classical rules 
formulated by the French. Reference is made to Shakespeare, 
and his genius commended; but as a technical artist Ben 
Jonson is considered his superior. The argument is that 
Jonson and those who have followed his example in English 
have conformed to the classical standards quite as rigidly 
as the great French dramatists. Dryden argues also for the 
heroic couplet as the most satisfactory verse form for tragedy. 
A few years later, Pope put the classical ideas into poetic 
form in his Essay on Criticism. A few quotations will 
illustrate its prevailing ideas — the dependence on rules, 
the emphasis upon form, the appeal to reason and restraint : 



CLASSICISM 



91 



"Be Homer's works your study and delight : 

Read them by day, and meditate by night. " 
"Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem ; 

To copy nature is to copy them." 
"Those rules of old discovered, not devised, 

Are nature still but nature methodized." 
"True wit is nature to advantage dress'd : 

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." 
"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance. " 
"Be not the first by whom the new are tried 

Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." 
"A Boileau still in right of Horace sways." 

Later Criticism. — Addison's critical essays in The Spec- 
tator follow the same lines, though he departed from conven- 
tional notions in praising Milton, whom the classicists, 
in general, neglected, and especially in commenting with fa- 
vor on the old ballad literature as illustrated in Chevy Chace. 
As the century advanced the critical formulas became less 
rigid. Dr. Johnson praised Shakespeare, and refused strict 
adherence to the rules for the three dramatic unities. A little 
later Thomas and Joseph Warton paid tribute to Spenser, 
the greatest of early romanticists, in their Observations on 
the Faerie Queene. This book led the critical revolt against 
classicism. The last important critical work of the classicists 
was Burke's Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our 
Ideas on the Sublime and the Beautiful. 

Suggested Readings 1 
Pope : The Rape of the Lock. 

Addison and Steele : The Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 

1 Except where special editions are mentioned, the works are to be 
found in the Pocket Series of English Classics, published by The Macmillan 
Company. 



92 ENGLISH LITERATURE 

Defoe : Robinson Crusoe, or The Journal of the Plague Year. 
Swift : Gulliver's Travels. 

Johnson: Life of Pope in The Lives of the Poets. (CasselFs 
National Library.) 

Goldsmith : The Deserted Village, She stoops to Conquer, Retalia- 
tion, The Vicar of Wakefield. 

Sheridan : The Rivals. 

Burke : Speech on Conciliation with America. 
Irving : Life of Goldsmith. 
Thackeray : Henry Esmond. 



CHAPTER VI 



ROMANTICISM 
(a) POETRY 

Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century. — Although the 

spirit of classicism, with its emphasis upon reason and com- 
mon sense, and with its interest in literary form over sub- 
ject matter, was in control in the eighteenth century, it was 
not the only influence at work. Side by side with it were 
other interests, growing in importance through the century, 
until, in the end, they became the dominant forces, and 
resulted in the great outburst of romanticism in the early 
nineteenth century. 

Influence of Spenser. — One of the first of the new in- 
fluences was a renewed interest in the older English writers, 
especially Spenser and Milton. The earliest interest was in 
poetic form merely. Although the prevailing meter was the 
heroic couplet, still the Spenserian stanza — consisting of nine 
lines, eight iambic pentameter lines supplemented by one 
iambic hexameter or Alexandrian, riming ababbcbcc — was 
used to a limited extent from the beginning of the cen- 
tury. At first, however, it was employed only for pur- 
poses of satire, with no effort to get the atmosphere of mystery 
and romance or the rich melody of the verse. The first poet 
to get the real Spenserian manner was Shenstone. He began 
a satire called The Schoolmistress in the Spenserian stanza, 
studying Spenser as he wrote. He soon became genuinely 

93 



94 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



interested, and before his poem was finished, he had changed 
it into a sincere Spenserian imitation. 

James Thomson (1700-1748) also imitated Spenser sym- 
pathetically in The Castle of Indolence. Compare the fol- 
lowing stanza from Thomson with the stanza from Spenser 
quoted on page 222. 

" A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was, 
Of dreams that wave before the half -shut eye ; 
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
Forever flushing round a summer sky : 
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly 
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast ; 
And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh ; 
But whatever smacked of noyance or unrest, 
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest." 

The Wartons, by their Observations on the Faerie Queene, 
increased the appreciation of Spenser. 

The Influence of Milton. — Milton also was imitated both 
in form and thought. The octosyllabic couplet of II Pense- 
roso and later the blank verse of Paradise Lost were used by 
Parnell, Joseph and Thomas Warton, and others; and this 
mood of " meditative comfortable melancholy " — the II 
Penseroso mood — gave rise to an entire school of " grave- 
yard poetry," of which Robert Blair's The Grave and Edward 
Young's Night Thoughts are examples, and of which Thomas 
Gray's An Elegy in a Country Churchyard is the most finished 
product. 

Romance. — A second tendency away from classicism 
was a new interest in medieval ideas and customs. Horace 
Walpole, the model of fashion, started the interest by build- 
ing a Gothic castle on Strawberry Hill, and gathering to- 
gether there a collection of antiquities. He also wrote a 
medieval romance full of mystery and superstition. This 



ROMANTICISM 



95 



romance, The Castle of Otranto, was the forerunner of a long 
series of stories, of which Clara Reeve's The Old English 
Baron, Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, and 
Matthew Gregory Lewis's Monk are rather crude examples, 
and of which the novels of Sir Walter Scott are the artistic 
climax. 

Ballads. — The old ballads and romances also came into 
vogue. As early as 1711 Addison spoke favorably, though 
conservatively, of Chevy Chace, and Bishop Percy firmly estab- 
lished the ballad interest by the publication of the Reliques 
of Ancient Poetry in 1765. The old manuscript which 
formed the basis of Percy's book was found by chance in the 
house of a friend. Percy discovered it under an old bureau, 
where it had been carelessly thrown, after some of the leaves 
had been torn away. He read the manuscript with much 
interest, and after consultation with his friends, decided to 
print it along with a number of modern songs. The volume 
contains a fairly representative selection of the older ballads : 
heroic ballads like Robin Hood, historical ballads like Chevy 
Chace and Sir Patrick Spence, romance ballads like Lord 
Thomas and Fair Annet. The Reliques of Ancient Poetry 
was followed by the collections of Ritson, Sir Walter Scott, 
and others. The freshness and simplicity of these old ballads 
delighted all those who were becoming tired of the conven- 
tions and artifices of classicism. 

Northern Antiquities. — Bishop Percy is responsible for 
another epoch-making book entitled Northern Antiquities 
(1770), which was translated from a French work written 
by Paul H. Mallet, professor at the University of Copenhagen. 
This book gives an account of the weird northern mythology, 
and contains translations from the Old Norse literature. Its 
influence in England is best seen in the poetry of Thomas 
Gray, especially in The Descent of Odin and The Fatal 



96 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Sisters. The same interest in the somber, mysterious, and 
weird is illustrated in James Macpherson's Ossian, a story 
developed out of scraps of legend which Macpherson had 
picked up in the highlands of Scotland. To the same general 
movement belong Robert Evans's Some Specimens of the 
Poetry of the Ancient Welsh Bards, Collins's Ode on the Popular 
Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland, and Thomas 
Chatterton's Rowley Poems, inspired by manuscripts which 
he found in the old church of St. Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. 

Renewed Interest in Nature. — A third romantic tendency 
was the renewed interest in nature and in country life. The 
classicists loved the city. Their only interest in nature 
came from classical books, or from artificial gardens mathe- 
matically laid out. Gradually, however, there grew up an 
interest in real English woods and fields and streams. People 
began to seek relaxation in the country, and came to enjoy 
nature in her rural state. The most important nature poems 
of the middle eighteenth century are James Thomson's 
(1700-1748) Seasons and William Cowper's (1731-1800) The 
Task. Thomson was reared in the country; Cowper spent 
most of his life there. Both loved nature sincerely. Thom- 
son had the wider interest ; but Cowper was a more accurate 
observer, and had the advantage of writing with his eye 
upon the object to be described. Cowper had less, too, of 
the conventional poetic phraseology of the classical school. 
Both men, however, show a marked departure from the 
manner of the classicists. 

The French Revolution. — The French Revolution fur- 
nished still another impetus to romanticism. It stimulated 
Englishmen to throw off the restraint of convention ; to be- 
come more independent of laws, customs, and traditions ; to 
assert individuality. It created a discontent with the world 
as it was, and stimulated the imagination to dwell upon the 



ROMANTICISM 



97 



ideal human state. The influence was both doctrinal and 
emotional. William Godwin's Political Justice introduced 
into England the doctrines of the French Revolution ; the be- 
lief in simplicity, the reliance on natural impulse as opposed to 
reason and common sense, and the faith in the perfectability 
of the human race, if it could be freed from the restraints 
of customs and conventions, of religion and laws. This book 
had a large influence upon the romantic poets, especially 
upon Shelley, Godwin's son-in-law. But, independent of 
doctrines, the whole outburst in France in favor of liberty, 
equality, and fraternity aroused the enthusiasm of young 
Englishmen, and helped emphasize in literature the imagina- 
tion and the emotions. It called attention to the poor and 
lowly; it evoked interest in the simple and fundamental 
things of life. 

Robert Burns. — By far the most popular of the early 
romantic poets was Robert Burns (1759-1796), a poor Scotch 
farmer with an impulsive nature, rich in emotions, and with 
a remarkable genius for song. He voiced the loves and sor- 
rows of the simple poor with rare truth and intensity. His 
democratic ideas, his large human sympathy, his love of 
nature, especially of animals and flowers, his hatred of cant 
and hypocrisy, his rich humor — all united to give him a 
deservedly wide popularity. His moral fiber, however, 
was weak. He lived a pathetic life, struggling desperately 
for daily bread, giving himself over to dissipation, and dying 
in poverty and bitter neglect. One stanza of his epitaph 
written by himself should be remembered. 

"The poor inhabitant below 

Was quick to learn, and wise to know, 
And keenly felt the friendly glow and softer flame, 
But thoughtless follies laid him low 
And stain' d his name." 



98 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



His Poetry. — The best poem of Burns on the virtues of 
the Scotch peasant is The Cotter's Saturday Night. Humor 
prevails in The Jolly Beggars and Tarn o' Shanter. The 
most exquisite nature touches are found in To a Mountain 
Daisy and To a Mouse. The most striking patriotic song is 
Scots wha ha! wi J Wallace Bled; the most tender love songs: 
Green Grows the Rashes 0, John Anderson my Jo, To Mary 
in Heaven, and The Banks o' Doon. The most famous poem 
on equality and democracy is A Man's a Man for a' That. 
In these poems particularly Burns shows his great qualities 
as a poet: downright sincerity, intensity of emotion, keen- 
ness and vigor of mind. 

Wordsworth. Peasant Poetry. — William Wordsworth 
(1770-1850) was, like Burns, a poet of the poor and the 
lowly. He believed that among the lower classes the most 
simple and fundamental human emotions were to be found 
at their best. Michael, his most popular poem of this kind, 
is a simple story of a Westmoreland peasant who is compelled 
to send his only son away from home to make a living. The 
boy falls into evil ways in the city, and is finally forced " to 
seek a hiding place beyond the sea," leaving the old man to 
wear out his life in poverty and sorrow. The story is re- 
markable for its simple pathos. It shows how Wordsworth, 
when at his best, could lift the commonplace into genuine 
poetry. 

Nature Poetry. — But Wordsworth was preeminently 
the romantic poet of nature. He spent nearly all his life of 
eighty years in the lake and mountain region of Westmore- 
land and Cumberland, developing in the midst of quiet 
surroundings that poise of mind and serenity of spirit which 
were his chief gifts to his age. His ideas about nature were 
peculiar. As a boy, he loved her just for the sake of her 
beauty and for the sake of the physical joy of healthy out- 



ROMANTICISM 



99 



door life ; but, as he grew older, he saw her deeper meaning. 
He believed in the spiritual kinship between man and nature. 
Nature seemed to him the language of the divine ; and he 
thought it was his mission as poet and seer to interpret the 
meaning of that language. In this he was more romantic 
than Thomson or Cowper, or indeed, than any of the nature 
poets who had preceded him. 

His theory of nature is expressed in Lines Composed a Few 
Miles above T intern Abbey: 

"For nature then [in boyhood] 

****** 

To me was all in all. — I cannot paint 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colours, and their forms were then to me 
An appetite ; a feeling and a love, 
That had no need of a remoter charm, 
By thought supplied, nor any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye. — That time is past, 
And all its aching joys are now no more, 
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur ; other gifts 
Have followed ; for such loss, I would believe, 
Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing often times 
The still, sad music of humanity, 
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 



100 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Whose dwelling is the light of setting *suns, 
And the round ocean and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods, 
And mountains ; and all that we behold 
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world 
Of eye, and ear, — both what they half create, 
And what perceive ; well pleased to recognize 
In nature and the language of the sense, 
The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
Of all my moral being." 

Wordsworth's Speculations. — Wordsworth delighted in 
mysterious and mystical speculations. Spiritual facts some- 
times appeared to him more real than physical facts. The 
physical world seemed a kind of prison house confining 
spirits which had belonged to a larger life, and which would 
return to that larger life w r hen released from the flesh. His 
boldest speculative poem is perhaps Intimations of Immor- 
tality, of which the following stanza contains the central 
idea : 

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And cometh from afar; 

Not in entire forgetfumess, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 



ROMANTICISM 



101 



But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy ; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

Moral Ideas. — The lofty moral ideas of Wordsworth are 
further expressed in The Prelude and in The Ode to Duty. 
The Prelude is an autobiographical account of the growth 
of the poet's mind. It is not significant as a piece of literary 
art, but very important in the understanding of the poet's 
personality. The Ode to Duty is remarkable for its high moral 
enthusiasm, expressed with great dignity and restraint. 

Wordsworth's Sonnets. — Wordsworth is also one of the 
greatest sonnet writers of the nineteenth century. The 
limitations of the form seem to have helped rather than to 
have hindered his imagination. Among the best of his 
sonnets are To Milton, It is a Beauteous Evening, Westminster 
Bridge, The World is too Much with Us. 

Coleridge's Poetic Method. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
(1772-1834) was the most intimate friend of Wordsworth 
during the years when the best poetry of each was written. 
Their first public venture in poetry, The Lyrical Ballads 
(1798), was planned as a joint production, though, in the end, 
the only important contribution of Coleridge was The Rime 
of the Ancient Mariner. The poetical methods of the two 
men, however, differed widely. Wordsworth's idea was 
to take real and commonplace incidents as subjects, and lift 
them by means of his reflective imagination into the realm 
of poetry. Coleridge's aim was to take the most mysterious, 
superstitious, and improbable incidents, and by detailed and 



102 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



specific treatment make them seem real. All that was weird 
and mysterious and improbable in the old ballads and ro- 
mances stimulated Coleridge's imagination ; he loved, too, 
their simplicity and naivete. The Rime of the Ancient 
Mariner and Christabel illustrate medieval luxuriance of 
imagination wrought into finished poetry by the conscious 
artist. The Ancient Mariner, moreover, is in the ballad 
meter, and shows many of the tricks of the ballad style. 
Other notable ballads are The Dark Ladie and The Three 
Graves. The dreamy and intangible quality of imagination 
is at its height in Kubla Khan, an oriental dream picture, 
which defies analysis, but charms by its rhythmic imagery. 
There is a magic quality about Coleridge at his best which 
has never been equaled. 

Loss of Poetic Power. — Unfortunately, however, his 
poetic output was not great. He lacked the power of sus- 
tained and protracted poetic effort, his mind turned to phil- 
osophic speculation, and he lost what he called his " shaping 
spirit of Imagination." In Dejection: an Ode, he says : 

" There was a time when, though my path was rough, 

This joy within me dallied with distress, 
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness : 
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 

And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine. 
But now afflictions bow me down to earth : 

Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ; 
But oh ! each visitation 
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 

My shaping spirit of Imagination. 
For not to think of what I needs must feel, 

But to be still and patient, all I can ; 
And haply by abstruse research to steal 

From my own nature all the natural man — 



ROMANTICISM 



103 



This was my sole resource, my only plan ; 
Till that which suits a part infects the whole, 
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul." 

Revolutionary Poems. — Both Coleridge and Wordsworth 
were influenced by the French Revolution, but only in an 
emotional way. Both were by nature too religious to accept 
the materialism, atheism, and anarchy of the revolutionary 
doctrines ; consequently as soon as the excesses in France 
became prominent, both repudiated the movement. Words- 
worth took refuge in nature; Coleridge, in philosophical 
speculation. Among Coleridge's revolutionary poems, The 
Destruction of the Bastile is an early outburst of emotional 
sympathy; the Ode on the Departing Year is a reproach of 
England for joining the coalition against France. France: 
an Ode is a bitter recantation. When liberty in France had 
drifted into tyranny, and, mad for conquest, had overthrown 
the freedom of Switzerland, Coleridge turned away in bitter- 
ness and disgust. 

" Forgive me, Freedom ! forgive those dreams ! 

I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament, 

From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent — 
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams. 

Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished, 
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain snows 

With bleeding wounds : forgive me that I cherished 
One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes ! 

To scatter rage and traitorous guilt 

Where Peace her jealous home had built; 

A patriot-race to disinherit 
Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear 

And with inexpiable spirit 
To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer — 
O France, that rhockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, 

And patriot only in pernicious toils ! 



104 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind ? 

To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, 
Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey ; 
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 

From freedom torn ; to tempt and to betray ? " 

Shelley's Revolutionary Poems. — A more genuine child 
of the Revolution was Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822). 
He was a rebel from the very beginning, chafing under every 
form of restraint. At school, he was called " mad Shelley, 
the atheist. " In early manhood, when he came under the 
influence of Godwin, he accepted the revolutionary doc- 
trines entire. Thus it happened that, unlike Wordsworth 
and Coleridge, he represents the revolution on both its doc- 
trinal and emotional sides. He believed profoundly that 
all the woes of men were to be traced to the tyranny of 
priests and kings. If man could only do away with govern- 
ments and religions, and start the world afresh along lines of 
absolute freedom, the race could be educated into a state of 
perfection. Queen Mab, his earliest revolutionary poem, 
is a fierce denunication of priests and kings. The Revolt 
of Islam is a story of heroic sacrifice in the cause of liberty. 
His most characteristic work, however, is Prometheus Un- 
bound. It is a revision of the old classical myth according to 
which Prometheus, the champion of mankind against the 
tyranny of Zeus, has been chained to a rock on Mount 
Caucasus, from which torment Zeus is determined not to 
free him, unless he will tell the secret upon which the con- 
tinuance of the power of Zeus depends. The old myth 
relates that Prometheus finally tells the secret, and is set 
free. Shelley changes the myth to suit his revolutionary 
ideas. Prometheus represents, not the deliverer of mankind, 
but mankind itself, bending under the tyranny of priests 
and kings. He will not yield. Furies torment him with the 



ROMANTICISM 



105 



thought that all efforts of the past for the good of mankind 
have been turned to evil ; but spirits of heroic action, self- 
sacrifice, wisdom, imagination, and love comfort him. In 
the fullness of time Demagorgon (Necessity) hurls tyranny 
from the throne. Asia, who represents the spirit of love in 
nature, is united to Prometheus, the spirit of man, and the 
golden age begins. The last act is a series of lyrics, cele- 
brating the age of perfect justice and peace. The poem 
shows Shelley's hatred of tyranny, and his sublime faith in a 
perfected humanity ruled everywhere by love. Its weak- 
ness is that it gives no light on how the result is to be brought 
about. 

Shelley not a Constructive Thinker. — Indeed, Shelley 
was not a constructive thinker; he was a lyric poet. His 
sense of fact was not strong. He deals less with the practical 
actualities of life than any of his contemporaries. He was 
an uncompromising idealist, with a sublime faith in the future 
of mankind ; but the visions which his faith pictured were 
unaccompanied by serious thought of how those visions were 
to be realized. However, the wealth of his imagination and 
the rich music of his verse gave his ideas enduring artistic 
form. 

" Adonais." — His poetry is of the elusive, etherial quality 
almost baffling to the commonplace mind. Even his nature 
imagery has to do with evanescent forms, the wind, the 
cloud, the voice of the unseen nightingale or skylark. This 
air of unreality is well illustrated in Adonais, his elegy on the 
death of John Keats. Those who come to weep over the 
bier are Urania (Heavenly Love), Splendors, Glooms, Hours, 
Destinies, and even the lovely Dreams which have emanated 
from the poet's brain in life. Shelley has been well called the 
poet's poet. 

The Poetry of Scott. — Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) 



106 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



represents primarily the influence of the old ballads and 
romances. From a child, he was familiar with all the 
legendary lore of the Scotch, and later published a large col- 
lection of old border ballads under the name, Minstrelsy of 
the Scottish Border. His first original productions were 
metrical romances, the meter being suggested by Coleridge's 
Christabel. The best are The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) 
a tale of Scottish border life in the Middle Ages, Marmion y 
A Tale of Flodden Field (1808), and The Lady of the Lake 
(1810), a story of the Scottish highlands at the time of James 
V of Scotland. Of these, Marmion is the most swift and 
powerful ; The Lady of the Lake, the richest and most charm- 
ing. These poems made Scott for a time the most popular 
literary man in the British Islands, and the Scott country 
still remains one of the most popular for literary pilgrimages. 

Qualities of his Poetry. — His poetry was not so deeply 
imaginative, not so artistically finished, as the poetry of 
Wordsworth and Coleridge. Scott was interested primarily 
in the pageantry of life. His romantic scenery is picturesque, 
his characters bold and wholesome, his story spirited and 
borne along on a rapid and buoyant verse. There is much 
brilliant declamation. 

Byron's Romanticism. — After the triumph of The Lady 
of the Lake, Scott's fame as a poet began to decline, his place 
in the popular favor being taken by Lord Byron (1788-1824). 
Byron's early poetry shows the influence of classicism. 
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, for instance, is written 
in rimed couplets and in the manner of eighteenth-century 
satire. But he soon developed marked romantic tendencies. 
His tales of Oriental life, The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, 
The Corsair, Lara, etc., are lurid and extravagant. Childe 
Harold is a story of travel, written in Spenserian stanzas, 
and recounting journeys in Portugal, Spain, Ulyria, Greece, 



ROMANTICISM 



107 



Turkey, the Rhine Country, and Italy. It is full of brilliant 
description, enriched by literary and historical allusions. 
Its mood is somber, passionate, rebellious. Harold, the 
protagonist, is a typical romantic figure, fleeing from the real 
world to find solace in solitude. 

Byron a Poet of Revolution. — Byron was the prince of 
radicals and revolutionists. He became for all Europe the 
prophet of liberty, voicing better than any one else the rev- 
olutionary feeling which smoldered everywhere after the 
failure of the French Revolution. Less of a doctrinaire 
than Shelley, he yet had a supreme contempt for all manner 
of restraint, and a passionate love of liberty. Add to this 
an oratorical method free from all refinements and subtleties, 
and the reason for his wide popularity is explained. His 
dramas Manfred and Cain are characteristic revolutionary 
pieces. Manfred is a kind of Faust, living high up in the 
Alps in gloomy and bitter isolation, scornful of his fate. 
Cain, the first murderer, is pictured as an heroic rebel against 
the tyranny of God. He is one of those 

" Souls who dare to look the Omnipotent tyrant in 
His everlasting face, and tell him that 
His evil is not good." 

Byron has been called the chief member of the " Satanic 
School of Poetry." 

" The Prisoner of Chillon." — His most finished poem is 
The Prisoner of Chillon, the pathetic recital of a Swiss patriot 
who has beeii released from a dungeon after years of imprison- 
ment, having seen his two brothers, who were imprisoned 
with him, die in their chains, and find graves beneath the 
floor of the dungeon. 

Byron's Satires. — Byron was also a satirist, the only one 
of the great romantic poets to win fame in this form of art. 



108 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



His English Bards and Scotch Reviewers is a clever attack 
upon the critics and poets of his time. The Vision of Judg- 
ment is directed against the poet Southey, who had aroused 
Byron's ire by praising George III. Don Juan, the most 
famous of all, is a comprehensive satire on modern society. 
Byron ruthlessly exposes the social corruption hidden be- 
neath the conventional veneer. The work is licentious 
but brilliant. It is, of all Byron's poems, the most complete 
expression of his strange personality. 

John Keats (1796-1821) occupies a place apart from his 
fellow-romanticists. He took almost no interest in the 
problems of his own time. His, poetic inspiration came 
almost exclusively from the classical and medieval past. 
Most of his information about Greek story and mythology 
came out of the classical dictionary, for he could not read 
the Greek language ; yet somehow he gained a sympathetic 
appreciation of the Greek spirit. At the same time, he knew 
and loved medieval romance with all its imaginative luxuri- 
ance. The combination of the classical and the romantic 
in his nature made him unique in his time. Endymion is 
a classical theme treated with romantic extravagance. 
Lamia, too, is rich in romantic coloring. Isabella and The 
Eve of St. Agnes are medieval themes. The Eve of St. Agnes 
has been called an " unsurpassed example of the pure charm 
of colored and romantic narrative in English verse." Hy- 
perion shows the Miltonic influence ; it is an example of 
" the grand style in poetry." His great odes, especially the 
Ode on a Grecian Urn and the Ode to a Nightingale, have rare 
beauty and finish. Indeed, Keats worshiped beauty. His 
poetic creed is expressed at the end of the Ode on a Grecian 
Urn: 

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, this is all 
We know on earth and all we need to know." 



Isabella and the Pot of Basil. 
After the painting by Holman Hunt. 



ROMANTICISM 



109 



The second volume he published began with the line 
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever. " 

Keats died at the age of twenty-five; yet he left work of 
such rare excellence that it has had a profound influence upon 
subsequent verse. 

(b) PROSE 

As the age of reason and common sense was preeminently 
an age of prose, so the age of imagination and emotion was an 
age of poetry. Still, romanticism had its stories in prose and 
its essays. Sir Walter Scott was the great exponent of the 
prose romance. When his poetic inspiration began to abate, 
and Byron threatened to take away his popularity, Scott 
turned to the writing of prose stories, and published Waverley, 
the first of the so-called Waverley Novels. He did not con- 
tinue the realistic traditions of Richardson or Fielding, but 
set himself rather to develop the method of Mrs. Radcliffe 
and " Monk " Lewis, looking back to the Middle Ages for 
inspiration, exploiting the mystery and superstition and 
high adventure of that romantic past. He played upon it all, 
however, with the hand of an artist, so that, although Mrs. 
Radcliffe and her school are now ridiculous, Scott still re- 
mains one of our great English masters. 

Scott's Prose Romances. — His romances may be divided 
into two general classes : one pertaining to the medieval past 
of England ; the other, to the past of Scotland. Ivanhoe is 
a story of the time of the crusades ; Kenilworth, of the time 
of Queen Elizabeth. These represent the English past. 
Old Mortality treats of the Scotch Covenanters. Other 
Scotch romances are Guy Mannering, The Heart of Mid- 
lothian, Rob Roy. 

Scott's Method. — Scott placed the ' emphasis on pag- 
eantry and adventure. To be sure, the characters are often 



110 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



fine typical figures: Bailie Jarvis in Rob Roy, Jeanie Deans 
in The Heart of Midlothian, Meg Merrilies in Guy Mannering 
are vivid Scotch portraits. Yet we are interested not so 
much in their character as in their fortunes ; and not so much 
in the meaning of life as in its outward show. Scott's 
chief purpose was to entertain. He was not a romanticist 
of the Byron or Shelley type ; he had no radical tendencies, 
political or social ; he did not feel the tyranny of conven- 
tional life. He had just a fascinating interest in the past of 
England and Scotland and knew how to make its pageantry 
and high adventure live again. He exploited the simple 
and fundamental aspects of romance. 

Wordsworth's Critical Writings. — The romantic school 
also developed a literature of criticism. Wordsworth, in 
his famous prefaces to the various editions of The Lyrical 
Ballads, took direct issue with the classicists. First, he in- 
sisted that the passions were the subject matter for poetry. 
Poetry, to him, was not a mechanical process, but " the spon- 
taneous overflow of the feelings/' modified, to be sure, by 
reflection, but generated, not manufactured. He spoke of 
poetry as " emotion recollected in tranquillity." Secondly, 
he believed that the poor and the lowly are fitter subjects 
for poetry than the great, because among the plain people 
the simple and fundamental emotions are to be found in the 
greatest sincerity and truth. In the third place, he dis- 
carded the old doctrine of poetic diction, going so far as to 
claim that the language of poetry differs in no essential 
particular from the language of prose. In the fourth place, 
he insisted upon the imagination as the shaping power of 
poetry. 

Coleridge as a Critic. — Coleridge, in his Biographia 
Literaria and other critical and philosophical works, agreed 
in general with Wordsworth, except in the matter of poetic 



ROMANTICISM 



111 



diction. He emphasized especially the function of the 
imagination, which he explained and defended according to 
the principles of German idealism. He laid much stress upon 
a distinction between " reason " and " understanding/ ' the 
" reason " being a peculiarly high power of the mind to grasp 
truth which cannot be explained by the common " under- 
standing." Carlyle spoke of Coleridge's ideas as " philo- 
sophical moonshine," and there may be truth in the remark 
as far as abstract philosophical speculation is concerned; 
yet Coleridge's criticisms of particular pieces of literature, 
such as his comments on Shakespeare, are highly apprecia- 
tive and illuminating. Indeed his present rank as a critic 
is very high, perhaps among the world's great five or 
six. 

The Critical Reviews. — This period was also the period 
of the great critical reviews : The Edinburgh Review, The 
Quarterly Review, and Blackwood's Magazine. The most 
influential contributors were Francis Jeffrey and Professor 
John Wilson. They were acknowledged authorities. Their 
criticism was keen and penetrating, but often bitterly dog- 
matic, the result of mere personal opinion and prejudice. 
It was against Jeffrey in particular that Byron's English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers was directed. 

Appreciative Criticism. — William Hazlitt (1784-1859) 
and Charles Lamb (1775-1834) were more sj^mpathetic 
critics. They made criticism " a kind of romance in the 
world of books." Lamb was an especially sympathetic 
critic, a lifelong friend of Coleridge, a defender of Words- 
worth and the new poetic school, an enthusiastic admirer 
of the older romantic literature of the Elizabethan time. 
His Specimens of Early English Dramatists, with critical 
comments, displays a wide and discriminating reading in 
Shakespeare's contemporaries. It did much to revive the 



112 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



fame of the lesser dramatists, whom the classicists had almost 
entirely neglected. 

Lamb as a Critic of Life. — But Lamb was quite as much a 
critic of life as a critic of literature. He lived year in and 
year out in London, a close and sympathetic observer of men 
and manners. Moreover, he saw everything in the light of 
the quaint humor of his own character and in the light of 
the touching pathos of his own simple, heroic life. His keen 
sympathy and quaint style have made him one of the most 
charming of English essayists. His Essays of Elia and Last 
Essays of Elia are his most popular books. Among the 
individual essays, Old China, A Dissertation on Roast Pig, 
and Dream Children illustrate very well the delicacy of his 
dreamy imagination, the quaintness of his humor, and the 
sincerity of his pathos. 

Thomas De Quincey. — In Thomas De Quincey (1785- 
1859) the romantic element is even more pronounced. He 
was one of the earliest converts to the ideas of Wordsworth 
and Coleridge, and lived neighbor to Wordsworth for twenty 
years at Grasmere. There he read a prodigious number of 
books, ate vast quantities of opium, and dreamed the most 
glorious and most terrible dreams. His Confessions of an 
Opium Eater is an extended autobiography from his earliest 
recollections down to the time when he became an absolute 
slave of the opium habit (1819). Susperia de Profundis 
(Sighs from the Depths), a sequel to The Opium Eater, 
tells of the wandering of his mind when under the spell of 
the drug. It is a gloomy and terrible series of dreams, of 
which Lavana and Our Ladies of Sorrow is the most widely 
known. The English Mail Coach is also a dream product. 
It relates that, when De Quincey was riding one night on 
the top of His Majesty 's mail, the coach collided with a frail 
carriage containing a pair of lovers. The horror and anguish 



ROMANTICISM 



113 



of the catastrophe, especially the vision of the girl in terror 
of death, entered into his dreams, appearing again and again 
in unexpected and weird dream combinations. 

De Quincey' s Critical Works. — The most important of 
De Quincey's critical works are On the Knocking at the 
Gate in Macbeth (1823), Murder Considered as a Fine Art 
(1827), and Literary Reminiscences. The Reminiscences 
contain appreciations of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, 
Shelley, Keats, and other literary figures of the Romantic 
School, many of whom De Quincey knew personally and in 
some cases intimately. 

De Quincey's Style — De Quincey's style is luxuriant and 
full of romantic coloring — highly imaginative prose. The 
range of his vocabulary was exceeded only by that of Shake- 
speare and Milton, and he used that vocabulary with the 
finest precision. His style is richly figurative, and moves along 
with a stately rhythm which gives it many of the emotional 
qualities of verse. The diffuseness of his writing, however, is 
often irritating to the reader who is impatient of digressions. 
De Quincey often stops for incidental, even trivial remarks, 
and is sometimes led far afield by his wayward fancy. It 
has been well said of him : " He illustrates both the defects 
and the virtues of the romantic temper; its virtues in the 
enkindled splendor of his fancy and the impassioned sweep 
of his style ; its defects in his extravagance, his unevenness, 
his failure to exercise adequate self-criticism." 

Suggestions for Reading 1 

Gray : Elegy in a Country Church Yard. 

Burns : Poems. 

Carlyle : Essay on Burns. 

1 All these readings may be found in the Pocket Series of English Classics 
published by The Macmillan Company. 



114 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Coleridge : The Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Christabel. 
Wordsworth : Shorter Poems. 
Byron : Childe Harold, Books III and IV. 
Shelley and Keats : Selections from Shelley and Keats. 
Lamb: "Old China," "A Dissertation on Roast Pig," and 
" Dream Children " in Essays of Elia. 
De Quincey : The English Mail Coach. 

Scott : Marmion, The Lady of the Lake, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 

Characteristics of the Victorian Era. — We have seen that, 
in the age of classicism, the emphasis in literature was placed 
upon reason and common sense. The primary appeal was 
to the intellect. Imagination and emotion had an incidental 
place. In the Romantic period the reverse was true. Imagi- 
nation and emotion were emphasized. Reason and common 
sense often gave way to extravagance and excess. In the 
Victorian Era both influences are strong, and run side by 
side throughout the century, each modifying and restraining 
the excess of the other. The literature of reason is less 
rigid and formal; the literature of the imagination, less 
extravagant and unreal. It is difficult to say which group 
is of greatest importance : Macaulay, Thackeray, Darwin, and 
George Eliot ; or Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning, and Stevenson. 
Nor is it always easy to classify authors, for the two streams 
of influence often came together, particularly in the greatest 
men. The case is not so easy with George Eliot and Alfred 
Tennyson as with Macaulay and Stevenson. George Eliot 
is not a thoroughgoing realist in spite of her own pro- 
fessions. Alfred Tennyson's romanticism was much modi- 
fied by the investigations of science ; he accepted without 
hesitation the principles of Evolution. Yet the prevail- 
ing attitude toward life of Macaulay, Thackeray, Darwin, 
and George Eliot is distinctly intellectual; that of Car- 
lyle, Tennyson, Browning, and Stevenson, imaginative and 

115 



116 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



spiritual. It must be remembered, however, that the 
greater the writer, the harder it is to classify him. 

Seeming Decline of Romanticism. — At the time of the 
death of Scott (1832), the great romantic impulse seemed to 
have spent itself. Byron, Shelley, and Keats were dead. 
Coleridge's " shaping spirit of imagination " had departed 
from him, and he wrote but little great poetry afterward. 
Wordsworth's best work was already done. The world 
seemed sinking back into a commonplace, matter-of-fact 
existence. But romanticism only changed its point of view ; 
it did not die out. There was a marked revival of interest 
in reason and fact, but it did not entirely displace the in- 
terest in the things of the spirit. At the very beginning of 
the new era, each interest had its champion. Thomas 
Babington Macaula}^ was the brilliant intellectual exponent 
of the things of the sense, the world of affairs. Thomas 
Carlyle was the great preacher of the things of the spirit, 
of the world of ideals. 

Macaulay was preeminently a man of affairs, a man of the 
most brilliant intellectual powers, but of meager spirituality. 
He was a member of parliament, a wit, an orator, an essayist, 
an historian. He was eminently practical, ready to accept 
things as they were and make the best of them. His interest 
was primarily in politics and government, and in commerce 
and industry. His chief reliance in life was on ballot-boxes 
and machinery. He is a typical exponent of the practical 
and purely intellectual side of nineteenth-century life. 

Macaulay's Prose Works. — With -the exception of The 
Lays of Ancient Rome — celebrations in verse of the ancient 
civic virtues of the Romans — Macaulay's literary work was 
almost exclusively in prose. His literary fame began with 
the essay on Milton, published in The Edinburgh Review in 
1825. Other literary essays are those on Addison, Bacon, 




Thomas Carlyle. 
After the portrait by James McNeil Whistler, 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



117 



and Dr. Johnson, all of whom interested him largely because 
they were in touch with practical everyday life. Among his 
essays and addresses on public men, the most important 
are those on William Pitt, Lord Clive, and Warren Hastings. 
They are remarkable for clear statements, apt illustrations, 
skillful emphases, strong contrasts, striking antitheses, 
rapid and graphic narration. Biography and history were 
his specialties, and he brought to them a breadth of reading 
and a power of memory rarely surpassed. His most extensive 
work, The History of England from the Accession of James II, 
only five volumes of which were completed, shows Macaulay's 
prejudices, and is full of exaggerations ; yet, because of its 
clear and brilliant style, it took hold of the public like a novel. 
Indeed, it was Macaulay's conscious purpose to appeal to 
the novel reading public. 

Carlyle's Philosophy of Life. — The work of Thomas 
Carlyle (1795-1881) is a vigorous protest against the attitude 
toward life represented by Macaulay. Carlyle lifted his 
voice in awful warning against the worship of machinery and 
of the ballot-box. He could not accept things as they were 
with mild complacency, because he thought there was need 
of radical reform. He was not a politician, however, but a 
prophet and a seer, a man not of compromises, but of ideals. 
Macaulay was interested in the machinery of life ; Carlyle, 
in the great spiritual forces at work behind the machinery, 
without which the machinery would be dead. Like Cole- 
ridge, he steeped himself in German idealism, though he took 
his idealism not from the abstract philosophies, as Coleridge 
did, but from the more concrete literary embodiments, es- 
pecially from the works of Goethe ; and whereas Coleridge 
was the first expounder of German idealism, or transcenden- 
talism, in England, Carlyle was its great propagandist. 
Carlyle's ideas are best expressed, perhaps, in his clothes- 



118 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



philosophy, explained at length in Sartor Resartus. From 
one point of view -this book is an attack against shams, and 
a plea for sincerity. Laws, customs, social forms, even reli- 
gious creeds are only the clothes in which the spirit of man 
arrays itself. The great realities are the spiritual realities. 
The outward forms in which the spirit manifests itself are 
comparatively unimportant. Carlyle complains that men 
forget the spirit, and foolishly worship the forms. The 
developing spirit of man, he says, outgrows its clothes ; and 
when outgrown, the old clothes should be cast aside. There 
is nothing sacred about laws or creeds. As long as they 
fitly clothe and truthfully represent the spirit, well and good ; 
but when they have become outworn or outgrown, away with 
them. Let us have no sham customs, no sham creeds. 
From another point of view, the book is constructive rather 
than destructive. The physical universe is the visible gar- 
ment of God — a conception of nature not altogether unlike 
Wordsworth's. Behind the garment is the genuine spiritual 
reality. Carlyle considered the man foolish and narrow who 
thought only of the texture and style of the garment, and 
cared not to know the personality within. 

Carlyle's Purposes. — All this is plain romantic doctrine, 
but Carlyle is trying to bring to it a clearer moral purpose. 
Like the earlier romanticists, he repudiates the world's old 
clothes; this is his Everlasting Nay. But he would not 
have the world without clothes. Make new and more 
suitable clothes for the human spirit and weave them in the 
loom of life ; this is his Everlasting Yea. Here emerges 
Carlyle's Gospel of Work. Carlyle preaches the task of the 
nineteenth-century idealism, i.e., to infuse into romanticism 
a great moral purpose, and construct a livable world which is 
at once both ideal and real. 

History and Biography. — In his views about government, 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



119 



Carlyle was not genuinely democratic, and in this he differs 
from his revolutionary predecessors. One of his cardinal 
doctrines was " government by the best/' Democracy he 
thought to be " government by the worst." Carlyle was 
a hero worshiper, and his Heroes and Hero-Worship is one 
of his most significant books. He took no stock in the 
judgment and insight of the masses. To him the real prob- 
lem of life was to find out the superior, God-inspired men, the 
genuine heroes, and to follow them. Carlyle is, therefore, 
in constant search of great personalities. History, to him, 
was but a series of biographies of great men. Like Macaulay, 
most of his work has to do with biography and history. Yet 
both his point of view and his method are different. Ma- 
caulay was interested in what men did ; Carlyle, in what men 
actually were. One emphasizes events ; the other, per- 
sonality. Macaulay's History of England is a well-planned, 
progressive narrative of events. Carlyle's History of the 
French Revolution is a drama in which great personalities 
such as Mirabeau display their power in scenes of confusion. 
In biography, Carlyle's work is far more sympathetic and 
penetrating than Macaulay's, as a comparison of their 
essays on Dr. Johnson shows. The History of Frederick the 
Great is Carlyle's most stupendous, perhaps his greatest 
biographical work. The most appreciative and sympathetic 
of his shorter sketches is the Essay on Burns. 

(a) REALISM 

The Realistic Novel. — Carlyle's protest against his time 
was vigorous and influential, but it did not stop realistic 
tendencies, as the development of the nineteenth-century 
novel attests. Back in the romantic period Jane Austen 
had made a more or less conscious protest against the ex- 
travagance of Mrs. Radcliffe and " Monk " Lewis in her 



120 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



novels of manners, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, 
Mansfield Park, and Emma. And now in the middle of the 
nineteenth century the effort to treat everyday life in the 
novel is further emphasized by Charles Dickens, William 
Makepeace Thackeray, and George Eliot. 

Dickens's Character Creations. — Charles Dickens (1812- 
1870) was a representative everyday Englishman. He 
lived very close to the public, and knew well how to repre- 
sent it and to speak for it. He began life as a reporter, and 
later became an editor, amateur actor, and public reader. 
As reporter he studied his public, as actor and reader he 
learned how to play upon it. Early in his career he began 
to write sketches of London life, mostly caricatures. Urged 
on by their success, he invented the " Pickwick Club," 
and worked out a large book of sketches, The Pickwick 
Papers, a book without any careful plan, but full of comic 
figures. Later, he conceived grotesque and terrible char- 
acters : Fagin and Sykes in Oliver Twist (1838), Quilp in Old 
Curiosity Shop (1841), and Madam Defarge in A Tale of 
Two Cities (1859). His child characters, too, are famous, 
Little Nell, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, pathetic and 
abused little creatures. The stories are often carelessly 
constructed ; indeed, many of them were written and pub- 
lished in installments, Dickens himself not knowing at 
the beginning how the story was to end. But the char- 
acters are always inimitable. Dickens was a great showman, 
with an inexhaustible supply of figures, humorous and 
pathetic, vicious and innocent. 

Dickens as a Reformer. — His work has also distinct 
moral purpose. Dickens attacked public abuses, and sought 
to redress wrongs. His stories aided many a reform. Oliver 
Twist attacks the workhouse; Bleak House, the chancery 
court; Little Dorrit, the debtor's prisons. Dombey and 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



121 



Son and Nicholas Nickleby, by exposing the cruelties prac- 
ticed in English schools, helped to put a stop to the shameful 
exploitation of innocent children. Indeed, the memory of 
Dickens's own bitter childhood is at the root of his opposition 
to social injustice and of his zeal for reform. It is easy to 
find fault with the work of Dickens. His characters are not 
so much portraits as caricatures. His plots are often form- 
less. Mistakes in English may be found on almost every 
page. Yet he was the most popular writer of his day, and 
the hundredth anniversary of his birth hardly finds his fame 
diminished. He lived close to the popular life. He had 
rare sympathy and insight. He knew well how to produce 
laughter and horror and tears. 

Thackeray's Attitude toward Life. — William Makepeace 
Thackeray (1811-1863) likewise wrote novels of real life, 
but his point of view differed from that of Dickens. Dickens 
was a man of the common people ; Thackeray, of the draw- 
ing-room and the club. Thackeray was the easy-going 
satirist of social life, drawing intellectual inspiration from 
the classicism of the eighteenth century. He represents 
the common-sense point of view of the critical clubman, not 
caring to make the world over, but accepting it as it is with 
all its irregularities, and laughing at it in a manner a little 
patronizing. He despises hypocrisy and sham, but does not 
employ invective as Carlyle does. His method is subtle, 
suggestive, and insinuating, without being cynical. He 
does not despise human nature as the true cynic does, but 
believes rather in its essential worth. The simple goodness 
of Colonel Newcome, for example, is treated with genuine 
sympathy, though not with the frank simplicity of Dickens. 
Thackeray is more critical, and maintains always a half- 
smiling reserve. 

His Novels. — Thackeray's novels show a thorough knowl- 



122 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



edge of life and literature in the eighteenth and early nine- 
teenth centuries. Henry Esmond and its sequel, The 
Virginians, picture English social life from the time of 
Addison to the time of the war for American independence. 
English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century shows a keen 
appreciation of the literature. Life in the late eighteenth 
and early nineteenth century is treated in Pendennis, The 
Newcomes, and Vanity Fair. The development of these 
stories is desultory and haphazard, Henry Esmond alone 
being carefully wrought out. The characters, too, are not so 
carefully analyzed as those of George Eliot, for instance, are. 
Thackeray had no scientific and philosophical ideas of novel 
writing, no elaborate theory of realism, no set of principles. 
He simply had a clear vision and a critical judgment, a genius 
for significant details, a chatty and confidential manner. He 
avoided fundamental spiritual conflicts and problems; but 
for a vivid picture of English social manners and customs in 
the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, as seen from 
the point of view of a common-sense man of the world, there 
is perhaps no better place to go than to the novels of Thack- 
eray. 

Henry Esmond shows Thackeray at his best. Esmond is 
a character of dignity and worth, an honorable and loyal 
English gentleman, who is allowed to tell his own story from 
his own essentially noble point of view. Moreover, Thack- 
eray's sympathetic knowledge of the eighteenth century gives 
the book peculiar reality and warmth. " The vanished world 
lives for us in character and in episode ; lives with a dignity 
and richness of conception and style that shows Thackeray 
to have been, when he chose, the greatest artist among the 
English novelists." 1 

George Eliot's Realism. — George Eliot (1819-1880) took 

^Moody and Lovett, History of English Literature. 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



123 



the art of novel writing far more seriously than Thackeray 
did. Thackeray did not scorn to gossip about life. George 
Eliot strove earnestly to interpret it. Her stories arose for 
the most part out of her real experiences, and her charac- 
ters were often suggested by real people. Adam Bede, for 
example, was suggested by an incident in the life of her aunt, 
who was the original of Dinah Morris, the woman preacher. 
Mrs. Poyser is supposed to have traits of George Eliot's 
mother. Cabel Garth in Middlemarch is like her father. 
There is much that is autobiographical in Maggie Tulliver 
in The Mill on the Floss. George Eliot's earlier stories of 
rustic life have great reality and freshness, but she was not 
content to give us a mere photograph of life. She must 
uncover the hidden springs of action and discuss moral prob- 
lems as an ethical teacher. Not content with surface 
reality, she must interpret the obvious facts philosophically 
and scientifically. She claimed to be a realist; and so she 
was to the extent that she gave no false idea of life, did not 
exaggerate life for effect, or color it, or throw it out of true 
perspective. But her books are not mirrors of life. Her 
sympathetic imagination plays around it all, and facts are 
always used for a conscious moral purpose. Silas Marner, 
for instance, treats of the regeneration of character. Har- 
dened and embittered by unjust suspicion, Silas is later 
humanized through the influence of love. Love will heal 
a morbid nature, is the theme. The story also illustrates 
the law of life that " whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he 
also reap." Romola is a psychologic study of the degenera- 
tion of character in Tito. George Eliot's purpose is to show 
that ethical law is as inexorable as physical law. 

Structure and Style. — In structure and style, George 
Eliot was more painstaking than either Dickens or Thack- 
eray. Her stories were first thoughtfully planned, and then 



124 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



carefully elaborated. Every effect was calculated. Espe- 
cially were suspense and contrast consciously and skillfully 
applied. The backgrounds for the action are fully devel- 
oped. The characters talk with absolute realism. The 
descriptions of Warwickshire, where her early novels are 
localized, are painstakingly exact. The language of rustic 
characters like Mrs. Poyser truly smack of the soil. 

The novels most interesting as stories, are Adam Bede, 
The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. In later novels, 
the philosophical and moral purpose interferes with the 
story interest. Romola and Middlemarch show Eliot's great 
learning, but lack the freshness and reality of her early work. 
Daniel Deronda, although regarded by Eliot as her greatest- 
book, is too analytical and moralizing to suit most readers 
of fiction. As a whole, however, her books represent the 
highest development in English of realistic fiction with a 
purpose. 

Meredith's Novels. — George Meredith (1828-1909) began 
to write as early as George Eliot, but his books did not find a 
wide public, until the end of the Victorian Era. Like George 
Eliot he was a psychologist, a moralist, and interpreter of life. 
His realism, however, is not so pronounced as George Eliot's. 
His characters are not always so clearly individualized. 
Indeed, as in The Egoist, they are often frankly presented 
as types. Nor does Meredith always take pains to have 
the dialogue true to life. He feels that his men and women 
must be made essentially human, but he cares more for typi- 
cal than for individual peculiarities, and is willing to com- 
press his dialogue more highly and weight it more heavily 
with meaning than would be possible in actual life. His 
thought, too, is often complicated and his style abrupt. 
But to the practiced reader his books are significant and stim- 
ulating. He teaches his moral lessons more often through 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



125 



comedy than through tragedy, making vice ridiculous rather 
than terrible. His most notable novels are The Ordeal of 
Richard Feverel (1859), Beaucharnp's Career (1876), The 
Egoist (1879), and Diana of the Crossways (1885). 

The Science Movement. — A further realistic movement 
which influenced profoundly though indirectly the literature 
of the Victorian Era is the development of science, especially 
the theory of evolution as made known to the world by 
Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species (1859). Other 
scientific writers were Lyell, Huxley, Tyndall, and Wallace. 
The conclusions of geology and biology which the work of 
these men represent changed the whole conception of life. 
The great popular preacher of the movement was Huxley. 
His Autobiography and Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews 
are free from learned technicalities and are carefully and 
elaborately exemplified and illustrated. They are perhaps, 
for the general reader, the clearest and most readable scien- 
tific books of this period. 

(b) IDEALISM 

Religious Movements. — These realistic and scientific 
tendencies, however, did not monopolize the thought of the 
period. The romantic spirit was still alive and active. 
The German idealism, which Coleridge had introduced, and 
Carlyle had so loudly preached, continued influential. At 
the University of Cambridge, Julius Hare, afterwards arch- 
deacon, and Frederick Maurice, preacher and writer, formed 
the center of a group of so-called Coleridgeans, and, more 
important still, at Oxford there was the great spiritual 
revival known as The Oxford Movement. Alarmed at the 
growing materialism of English thought, at the prevailing 
mechanical conception of life, and at the lack of spirituality 
in the church, where the conventional notions of the eight- 



126 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



eenth century still lingered, a group of men under the leader- 
ship of John Henry Newman sought to bring back the moral 
enthusiasm and spiritual mystery of the early church. 

This movement owed much to the romanticists. In his 
Apologia pro Vita Sua, Newman himself tells how largely 
he drew inspiration from them : 

"What will best describe my state of mind at the early part of 
1839, is an Article in the British Critic for that April. . . . After 
stating the phenomenon of the time, as it presented itself to those 
who did not sympathize in it, the Article proceeds to account for it ; 
and this it does by considering it as a re-action from the dry and 
superficial character of the religious teaching and the literature of the 
last generation, or century, and as a result of the need which was 
felt both by the hearts and the intellects of the nation for a deeper 
philosophy, and as the evidence and the partial fulfilment of that 
need, to which even the chief authors of the then generation had 
borne witness. First, I mentioned the literary influence of Walter 
Scott, who turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages. 
' The general need/ I said, 'of something deeper and more attractive, 
than what had offered itself elsewhere, may be considered to have 
led to his popularity; and by means of his popularity he re-acted 
on his readers, stimulating their mental thirst, feeding their hopes, 
setting before them visions, which, when once seen, are not easily 
forgotten, and silently indoctrinating them with nobler ideas, which 
might afterwards be appealed to as principles.' 

" Then I spoke of Coleridge, thus : 'While history in prose and 
verse was thus made the instrument of Church feelings and opinions, 
a philosophical basis for the same was laid in England by a very 
original thinker, who, while he indulged a liberty of speculation 
which no Christian can tolerate, and advocated conclusions which 
were often heathen rather than Christian, yet after all installed a 
higher philosophy into inquiring minds, than they had hitherto 
been accustomed to accept. In this way he made trial of his age, 
and succeeded in interesting its genius in the cause of Catholic 
truth/ 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



127 



" Then come Southey and Wordsworth, 'two living poets, one of 
whom in the department of fantastic fiction, the other in that of 
philosophical meditation, have addressed themselves to the same 
high principles and feelings, and carried forward their readers in 
the same direction.' " 1 

" Apologia pro Vita Sua." — This romantic tendency in 
Newman led him to the love of mystery and the spiritual 
longing of medieval Christianity, and thence to the faith of 
the primitive church. The movement which he championed 
drifted into a stormy theological controversy, and finally 
collapsed, Newman and some of his followers passing over 
to the Roman Catholic Church. Still, imaginative and 
spiritual interests were greatly stimulated and literature 
incidentally influenced, though with the exception of a few 
hymns like Lead Kindly Light, the only direct contribution 
to genuine literature made by the movement is the auto- 
biography of Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua. NewmanV 
theological ideas do not command a wide popular interest, 
but his strong spiritual personality and admirably clear and 
beautiful style make his book an undoubted contribution to 
real literature. 

Arnold's Attitude toward Life. — Matthew Arnold (1822- 
1888) shows both romantic and classical tendencies. The 
mantle of Thomas Carlyle is said to have fallen upon him, 
but he wore it with a decided difference. Like Carlyle 
he hated the crass materialism of his time. Those who held 
the machine view of life, who relied upon ballot-boxes, 
steam-engines, and trade, he called philistines, enemies of 
the children of light ; and he was never weary of inveighing 
against them. He was not, however, a genuine romanticist. 
Indeed, his whole thinking was deeply colored with classical 
ideas. He was a " wanderer between two worlds." He 

1 Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, pp. 76-77. 



128 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



had romantic inspirations, but revolted against romantic 
formlessness and extravagance. Carlyle prayed for light; 
Arnold, for " sweetness and light. " Carlyle preached the 
value of conduct. Arnold added the complementary virtue 
of open-mindedness, reasonableness, culture. Culture, " the 
knowledge of the best which has been thought and done in 
the world," was to Arnold the panacea for all ills — the road 
of deliverance in religion, politics, education, and literature. 
This classical idea of the well-rounded nature, perfect 
symmetry of life, is his fundamental doctrine. He fought 
the narrow-mindedness and self-satisfaction of the rising 
middle class. He preached, in season and out of season, 
" the study of perfection." These ideas are clearly devel- 
oped in Culture and Anarchy and Literature and Dogma. 

Literature us. Science. — In education, Arnold was a great 
champion of the study of literature, " the best which has 
been thought and said in the world." He was jealous of the 
encroachments of what he called the " instrumental knowl- 
edges " into the curriculum of the schools. He thought that 
literature best met the fundamental demand of human nature 
to relate knowledge to " the sense of conduct " and to " the 
sense of beauty." He believed, therefore, that literature and 
not science should constitute the bulk of education for the 
majority of mankind, and he entered into a very lively con- 
troversy with Huxley upon this subject. Huxley's Science 
and Culture, originally delivered as an address at the opening 
of Sir Josiah Mason's College, Birmingham, is the argument 
for science. Literature and Science, one of Arnold's American 
addresses, contains the argument for literature. 

Arnold's Literary Criticism. — In literary criticism also 
Arnold sought the middle way between the real and the 
ideal. He appreciated the romantic impulses, but was not 
swept away by passion and by mystic vision. He stood for 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



129 



sanity, " sweet reasonableness/' moderation, symmetry, 
balance. His first famous piece of criticism is his essay 
On Translating Homer. Among his best critical essays are 
those on Wordsworth and Byron in Essays in Criticism, and 
that on Emerson in Discourses in America. Arnold was the 
literary dictator of his day. 

Arnold's poetry, likewise, is midway between the classical 
and the romantic. His poems are never extravagant or 
mystical. They err rather in the direction of restraint. 
Arnold tried to unite romantic feeling with classical purity 
of form and style. Sohrab and Rustum, The Scholar Gypsy, 
and Thyrsis are good examples. Dover Beach, a beautiful 
and exquisite lyric, shows particularly well Arnold's restraint 
in the treatment of nature. Like Wordsworth he loved 
the sublime calm of nature as opposed to the turmoil of 
human life, but he did not find nature so full of moral 
meaning as Wordsworth did. Arnold's view was more 
scientific. 

Arnold's general poetic mood is melancholy rather than 
serene. Unfortunately he had no great message of inspira- 
tion and faith. Life was full of sadness, renunciation, and 
despair. Dover Beach is a characteristic expression of his 
prevailing mood. After speaking of " the eternal note of 
sadness " in the wash of the waves on the beach, he continues : 

" Sophocles long ago 
Heard it on the ^Egean, and it brought 
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery ; we 
Find also in the sound a thought, 
Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

" The Sea of Faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 



130 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



But now I only hear 

Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 

Retreating to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 

And naked shingles of the world. 

" Ah, love, let us be true 
To one another ! for the world which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new, 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night." 

Ruskin's Writings on Art. — John Ruskin (1819-1900) 

was likewise a mediator between the ideal and the real. As 
we have already seen, one of the most striking characteristics 
of the romanticism of the middle of the nineteenth century 
was its moral purpose, the effort to democratize the things of 
the imagination and the spirit, and to open the eyes of 
commonplace Englishmen to the spiritual meaning of life ; 
in other w r ords to make romanticism practical. Ruskin 
pushed this propaganda with something of the intensity 
of Carlyle, of wiiom he was an acknowledged follower. His 
early energy was devoted to art. Modern Painters, his first 
book, discusses the underlying principles of landscape paint- 
ing. The Seven Lamps of Architecture and Stones of Venice 
have to do with architecture. Ruskin believed that all 
genuine art has its source in the moral nature of the artist, 
and represents the moral temper of the nation in w r hich it is 
produced. His mission was to preach the spiritual meaning 
of art, w T hich he exalted above mere technique. He did 
more than any of his contemporaries to broaden the appre- 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



131 



ciation of art, and thus to temper the prevailing materialism 
of English thought. 

" Unto this Last." — In his later life he devoted himself 
to the larger criticism of life. During his study of art he had 
become convinced that great art expresses the national life, 
and is therefore dependent upon the health and beauty of 
society as a whole. He believed that the debased condition 
of art in his day in England was due to the industrial organi- 
zation of society, to the emphasis upon machinery, to the 
prevalence of purely commercial standards of life, to the 
worship of the " Goddess of getting-on." He therefore 
became an economic and social reformer. Unto this Last 
(1862) contains his ideas of reform in political economy. 
He begins with the central idea of wealth, and inquires 
what wealth is. The real wealth of a nation, he says, is not 
money, but men. A man's soul is more important than his 
pocketbook. A political economy which considers only the 
accumulation and distribution of material wealth, neglect- 
ing the human element, is narrowing and debasing to the 
nation. He wishes a political economy which shall give 
attention to the production of healthy, happy, useful men. 
His ideas are distinctly socialistic. He pleads : (1) for 
government training schools to teach young men and women 
the trades by which they shall live, in addition to the laws 
of health and the principles of justice; (2) for government 
farms and workshops, where the necessaries of life shall be 
produced, honest work demanded, and a just standard of 
wages maintained ; (3) for a government guarantee of work 
for the unemployed ; (4) for adequate provision for the sick 
and the aged. Ruskin did much to emphasize the idea of 
social justice, which has commanded so much attention 
since Ruskin's time. 

Other Works. — Ruskin's most popular works are Sesame 



132 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



and Lilies, which proclaims the gospel of spiritual wealth, 
especially as deposited in books, and The Crown of Wild 
Olive, a series of lectures to workingmen on Work, Traffic, 
and War. Fors Clavigera contains some of his ripest teach- 
ing. Prceterita, his autobiography, gives an especially 
delightful account of his boyhood and youth. 

Tennyson's Early Poetry. — Each of the writers thus far 
discussed, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin, Macaulay, Dickens, 
Thackeray, George Eliot, represents some important phase 
of nineteenth-century literature, but none of them represents 
the age more completely than Alfred Tennyson. He touched 
the thought of the time at many points, puzzled over its 
problems, came close to its struggle between doubt and faith. 
His early tendencies were romantic : he was brought up in 
the country under all the influences of nature ; his young 
mind was steeped in ballad and romance ; Byron was one of 
his youthful idols. Some of the best of his early poems such 
as The Lady of Shalott and Recollections of the Arabian 
Nights have all the atmosphere of pure romance. The 
Palace of Art shows his relation to the new moral tendencies, 
his wish to be a teacher as well as a singer. The volume of 
1842 shows even finer qualities of romance in Sir Galahad, 
Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, and Morte d' Arthur. 
Classical interests are shown in CEnone, The Lotus Eaters, 
and Ulysses. Already, to romantic fervor of imagination 
and atmospheric charm was added a classical sense of form 
and finish. A tendency to treat real problems of life appears 
in The Palace of Art, St. Simeon Stylites, and The Vision 
of Sin. The Princess (1845) is a half-playful, half-earnest 
contribution to the question of the higher education of 
women. 

Science and Faith. — At the same time Tennyson was 
struggling with deeper problems. In 1833 his dearest friend, 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



133 



Arthur Hallam, died. Grief for this friend brought Tennyson 
face to face with the mystery of death, and with the question 
of immortality. It plunged him into the midst of the great 
nineteenth-century struggle between science and faith. 
The new developments of science in the direction of the 
principles of evolution appealed to his keen, strong intellect ; 
but the conclusions of science seemed to destroy some of 
the most cherished doctrines of the Christian faith, and 
Tennyson's nature was profoundly religious. How to recon- 
cile science and faith was the great problem of the time. It 
now became Tennyson's personal problem. Did the truths 
of science actually belie revelation and deny immortality? 
Could he accept evolution, and still maintain his Christian 
faith? The record of his struggle with this problem and what 
he felt to be a triumphant conclusion is given in In Memoriam 
(1850), a series of lyrics written at various times after 1833, 
showing the progress of his experiences from grief and de- 
spair to a larger human sympathy and a surer Christian faith. 
He came to believe that scientific truth and spiritual truth 
are not antagonistic but complementary, each as real as the 
other. To be sure new scientific truth made it necessary to 
modify old creeds, but it did not destroy spirituality nor re- 
move the necessity of faith. He sums up this belief in the 
introduction to In Memoriam. 

" Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 

Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing where we cannot prove ; 

" We hai^e but faith : we cannot know ; 
For knowledge is of things we see ; 
And yet we trust it comes from thee, 
A beam in darkness : let it grow. 



134 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



" Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 

"But vaster." 

Estimates of " In Memoriam." — In Memoriam is the 
most representative poem of the experience of the nineteenth 
century. All recognize this, though the poem has come to 
various readers with varying degrees of satisfaction and 
finality. Some think it represents only the inadequate con- 
clusions of a bewildered age, and speak of it disparagingly 
as representing " the great Victorian compromise." Others, 
like Tennyson himself, have seen in it the triumphant rec- 
onciliation of science and faith. 

" The Idylls of the King." — Another of Tennyson's 
masterpieces, thought by some to be as great as In Memoriam, 
is The Idylls of the King, a series of romances on the Arthurian 
material, which has haunted the imagination of Englishmen 
since the Norman Conquest. Here again the moral purpose 
of nineteenth-century romanticism is evident. The stories 
are told with the avowed purpose of treating modern spirit- 
ual problems. Tennyson says in the dedication to the 
queen : 

"Accept this old imperfect tale, 
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul ; 
Ideal manhood closed in real man, 
Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost, 
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak, 
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still ; or him 
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's." 

The poem is not an allegory in any strict sense, but the 
stories are so modified as to represent the great struggle in 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



135 



life between material and spiritual forces — another form 
of the theme of In Memoriam. 

Theme of the Idylls. — Tennyson was interested in the 
Arthurian legends all his life. As a boy he played that he 
was a Knight of the Round Table. Among his earliest 
poems was The Lady of Shalott and other lyrics on Arthurian 
themes, In 1842 came Morte d' Arthur, afterwards to be made 
a part of the completed Idylls under the name of The Passing 
of Arthur. At first he was interested only in the stories 
as such. Even as late as 1859, when Enid, Vivien, Elaine, 
and Guinevere were published, his idea was merely to pre- 
sent contrast pictures between false and true types of woman- 
hood. Not till 1869 was the epic character of the series 
worked out. The theme was then developed of an ideal 
society gradually destroyed by the forces of sensuality and 
mysticism. The influence of these two destructive forces 
running through the series gives the unity to the poem. 
Tennyson took the middle conservative ground between 
materialism and extravagant romanticism. The Holy Grail 
shows how his ideas differed from medieval ideas, or even 
from the ideas of the early nineteenth-century roman- 
ticists. The duty of man is not to make an ideal world for 
himself apart from real life. Tennyson's ideal is neither 
ascetic er mystical. He actually condemns the quest of 
the Holy Grail as a following after wandering fires, when 
men should be struggling to overcome the evil in the world. 

Tennyson's Spiritual Triumph. — Essentially, then, Ten- 
nyson was a great religious poet. He preached the prac- 
tical application of religious faith to modern thought and 
conduct. He had a positive spiritual message for a time 
which certainly needed such a message. As he grew old 
his spiritual experience deepened and at the end he was able 
to say triumphantly : 



136 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



"I have climb'd to the snows of Age, and I gaze at a field in the Past, 
Where I sank with the body at times in the sloughs of a low desire. 
But I hear no yelp of the beast, and the man is quiet at last 
As he stands on the heights of his life with a glimpse of a height 
that is higher/' 

His calm departure from life is told in Crossing the Bar, one 
of his last poems. 

Robert Browning. — Side by side with Tennyson in great- 
ness, though not so popular a representative of his age, 
stands Robert Browning (1812-1889). He, too, cherished 
romantic traditions. He was an idealist and an optimist, 
a great spiritual poet, a poet of love and faith. His poetry 
is not so easy to read as Tennyson's, because he was not so 
great a master of style, and because he takes so much for 
granted on the part of the reader, who must read between 
and behind the lines, before a poem can really be under- 
stood. He had, however, a more vigorous mind and an 
equally high moral earnestness. His poetry is highly stimu- 
lating to many who see in Tennyson's poems more beauty 
than strength. 

His Dramatic Qualities. — Browning was more dramatic 
than Tennyson. He did not write successful stage plays, 
but he was very keen in the analysis of his characters, and 
very successful in bringing out their point of view of life 
in dramatic monologue. My Last Duchess illustrates this. 
Only one person, a proud medieval duke, speaks ; but both 
his character and the character of his wife, about whom he 
speaks, are made perfectly clear. Moreover between and 
behind the lines the reader sees a dramatic situation enacted. 

Browning's range was wide. His characters belong to 
many countries and to various periods of history. His 
favorite method was to find some crisis point in the thinking 
of an entire age, imagine it as the crisis point in the experi- 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



137 



ence of an individual, and then cause that person to develop 
the situation in monologue in such a way as to bring out 
Browning's own idea of the meaning and worth of life. Saul 
so presents the old Hebrew vision of the Messiah as to bring 
out Browning's idea of the significance of the love of God as 
revealed in Christ. Cleon treats of the despondency and 
vain longing of the Greek mind in the first century after 
Christ, when the vitality of both Greek religion and Greek 
literature had passed away. The theme is used by Brown- 
ing to explain the weakness of the pagan conception of life, 
the emptiness of life without Christian ideals. Andrea del 
Sarto treats of the decadence of art in Italy, when painting 
was no longer represented by Raphael and Michael Angelo, 
but by such men as Andrea del Sarto, a painter perfect in 
technique, but with no large inspiration; an artist great of 
execution, but small of soul. The situation is used to explain 
Browning's idea that the basis of great art is in character 
rather than in skill, that no artist can be great without 
spiritual power. The same method is seen in Caliban, A 
Death in the Desert, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and many other poems. 
No one has made so much of the dramatic monologue as 
Br o wiling, 

The Ring and the Book is his longest, perhaps his greatest, 
masterpiece. In it he has transformed the crude raw material 
of an old Italian murder trial into a great piece of art, inter- 
preting profoundly the most fundamental passions and emo- 
tions. A single story is told from twelve different points 
of view, the most interesting of which are (1) the view of the 
husband, who defends the murder of his wife, (2) the view 
of the wife, who tells her story from her deathbed, (3) the 
view of the chivalrous priest, who relates how he tried to 
rescue the wife from the cruelty of her husband, and (4) the 
view of the Pope, who gives the final judgment in the case. 



138 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Browning's Fame. — Browning was slow in gaining a 
public, largely on account of the peculiarities of his style ; 
but his intense and positive nature at last won an influence 
unusually strong and permanent. " The robustness of 
Browning's nature, its courage, its abounding joy and faith 
in life, make his works a permanent storehouse of spiritual 
energy for the race, a storehouse to which for a long time 
to come it will in certain moods always return. In an age 
distracted by doubt and divided in will, his strong unfalter- 
ing voice has been lifted above the perplexities and hesita- 
tions of men, like a bugle call to joyous battle in which the 
victory is to the brave." 1 

Rossetti. — - Romantic traditions were further continued 
in the Pre-Raphaelite movement, of which the most impor- 
tant literary figures are Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William 
Morris. As the name Pre-Raphaelite implies, the movement 
at first had to do with painting rather than with literature. 
The aim was to choose ideal and even mystical subjects, and 
then paint them with painstaking attention to detail. The 
school stood for idealism in conception and realism in exe- 
cution. As far as subject matter was concerned, inspiration 
came from the poetry of Keats, the old ballads and romances, 
and the mystical religion of Dante and the medieval church. 
The early Pre-Raphaelites were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
John Francis Millais, and Henry Holman Hunt. Of these 
only Rossetti became prominent in literature. He was 
a great lover of Dante, and indeed of all the mystery and ro- 
mance of the Middle Ages. His literary work consists 
largely of ballads and romances with the exception of his 
great sonnet sequence, The House of Life, His most pas- 
sionate ballads are Sister Helen and The King's Tragedy. 
The Blessed Damosel illustrates particularly well the Pre- 

1 Moody and Lovett, History of English Literature. 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



139 



Raphaelite union of spirituality in conception and concrete- 
ness and simplicity in the treatment of detail. As might 
be expected of a painter-poet, Rossetti's poems are marked 
by great picturesque beauty. Many of them, notably 
The Blessed Damosel and a large number of sonnets, are 
companion pieces to pictures on the same themes. Rossetti's 
world was a dream world richly visualized. 

William Morris (1834-1896) was a follower of Rossetti, 
though not so mystical a thinker nor so sensuous an artist. 
He was, however, more versatile and practical. Besides 
being a painter and man of letters, he manufactured artistic 
furniture and many kinds of household decorations such as 
wall paper and tapestries. He also founded the famous 
Kelmscott Press for the production of artistic printing and 
bookbinding. His poetic career began in true romantic 
fashion with the passionate Defense of Guinevere, which was 
followed by a long series of romances in both poetry and prose. 
The Earthly Paradise is a collection of stories in verse taken 
from both classical and Icelandic myth and legend. One 
of the most spirited and sustained is The Lovers of Gudrun, 
taken from an old Icelandic saga. Interest in the literature 
of the North is further attested by Sigurd the Volsung, an 
epic founded on one of the old sagas, and by the prose ro- 
mances, The House of the Wolftngs, The Story of the Glitter- 
ing Plain, and The Roots of the Mountains. Later in life 
Morris became a socialist. The Dream of John Ball and 
News from Nowhere are romances having to do with the 
problem of an ideal social state. 

Stevenson's Romances. — At the close of the Victorian 
Era three important forms of literature were represented 
by three significant men : the prose romance, by Robert 
'Louis Stevenson; poetry, by Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
and criticism, by Walter Pater. Robert Louis Stevenson 



140 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



I 



(1850-1894) wrote a small amount of poetry, notably 
poems of child life ; but most of his work was in prose. 
He was primarily a story-teller who avoided the moral 
strenuousness of his age and reverted to the old romantic 
stories of adventure represented by the writings of Sir 
Walter Scott. Treasure Island is a tale of piracy and 
search for hidden treasure. Kidnapped and David Balfour 
relate the adventures of a youth who is kidnapped and sent 
to sea that he may be deprived of his inheritance, and who, 
after shipwreck and wandering, returns at last to claim and 
secure his rights. The New Arabian Nights is a collection 
of fantastic and extravagant stories in modern setting. 
The character work is never subtle, the emphasis being 
always upon the story. The structure and style are superior 
to Scott's. Description for its own sake is avoided. The 
story movement is more rapid, the diction more discrimi- 
nating, the sentence structure firmer, the grace of style 
more pronounced. 

Swinburne's Paganism. — Algernon Charles Swinburne 
(1837-1909), the last of the great Victorian poets, stands 
somewhat apart from his age. He was not a moral and 
religious poet like Tennyson or Browning ; on the contrary, 
he inveighed against Christianity. He did not find his 
chief inspiration in the mystery and superstition of the 
Middle Ages, although one of his best long narrative poems 
is Tristram of Lyonesse. His inspiration came chiefly from 
paganism. He was an impressionalist, giving way to self- 
indulgence and neglecting moral issues. 

Swinburne's Poetic Style. — His poetic style is to most 
readers bewildering, for it is inexhaustibly rich in words and 
images. At times it is verbose. The charm of his poetry 
lies in his mastery of rhythm and rime. Sometimes the * 
rich music of the verse is developed at the expense of the 



THE VICTORIAN ERA 



141 



thought. The reader is borne along by mere sensuous 
beauty independent of the meaning of the lines. The effect 
is that of verse music rather than of poetry. The best 
lyrics have to do with the sea and with the beauty and 
pathos of child life. One of his most finished longer poems 
is Atalanta in Calydon, sl drama after the Greek model. 
" The action moves with stately swiftness, in obedience to 
the strict canons of Greek form ; the pathos is deep and gen- 
uine ; and the music, especially in the choruses, is splendid 
in range and sweep. " 

Walter Pater (1839-1894) was an impressionistic critic. 
He had a highly sensitive nature and gave himself to the 
analysis and explanation of his sensations. To him the en- 
tire world of experience was in a state of flux ; nothing was 
fixed. His business was to catch the impression of the 
moment, and experience its full aesthetic effect. He was a 
highly refined pagan — an Epicurean in the best sense. He 
believed in life, abundant life, a life of various and select 
sensations. He was not opposed to harmony, discipline, 
and self-control ; but he did not emphasize these as Matthew 
Arnold did. Pater would cultivate in every way the power 
to appreciate impressions and sensations. He became 
therefore an appreciative rather than a dogmatic critic of 
life and literature. His most characteristic writings are: 
Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), Marius the 
Epicurean (1885), Imaginary Portraits (1887), and Appreci- 
ations (1889). Marius , the Epicurean seems to contain 
much that is autobiographical. 

Summary. — With Stevenson, Swinburne, and Pater the 
Victorian Era comes to an end. It was an age, as we 
have seen, rich in both prose and poetry, with influences 
both romantic and classical, both idealistic and materialis- 
tic. The great writers represent all the phases of a many- 



142 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



sided national life. Macaulay was the brilliant historian 
of material progress ; Carlyle, the preacher of idealism ; 
Ruskin, the democratizer of art ; Arnold, the analytical 
critic ; Dickens, the champion of the lower classes ; Thack- 
eray, the mild satirist of high society; George Eliot, the 
philosophical interpreter of the laws of life; Browning, the 
poet of optimism; Tennyson, the poet of the struggle be- 
tween science and faith. All of them show the intimate 
relation which exists between literature and life. 

Suggested Readings 1 

Macaulay : Essay on Dr. Johnson. 

Essays on Milton and Addison. 
Carlyle : The Essay on Burns. 

Heroes and Hero-Worship, Lecture I. 
Dickens : A Tale of Two Cities. 
Thackeray : Henry Esmond. 
George Eliot : Silas Marner. 
Arnold : Sohrab and Rustum. 
Huxley : Selections from Lay Sermons. 
Ruskin : Sesame and Lilies. 

The King of the Golden River. 
Tennyson : Idylls of the King. 
Browning : Shorter Poems. 

Morris: The Lovers of Gudrun in The Earthly Paradise, The 
Story of the Glittering Plain (published by Longmans, 
Green and Co.). 

Stevenson : Treasure Island, Kidnapped. 

1 Except where special editions are mentioned, the books may be had 
in the Pocket Series of English Classics published by The Macmillan 
Company. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



A WORKING LIBRARY FOR THE STUDY OF ENGLISH 
IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS 1 

BOOKS ON LANGUAGE AND RHETORIC 

Abbott, E. A., Shakespearian Grammar, Macmillan. ... $ 1.50 

Alden, R. M., Introduction to the Study of Poetry, Holt 1.25 

Bradley, H., The Making of English, Macmillan 1.00 

Bright & Miller, Elements of English Versification, Ginn .80 

*Genung, J. F., Working Principles of Rhetoric, Ginn. . 1.40 
*Greenough, B., and Kittredge, G. L., Words and Their 

Ways in English Speech, Macmillan 1.10 

*Hill, A. S., Principles of Rhetoric, New Edition, Ameri- 
can Book Co 1.20 

Jespersen, O., Growth and Structure of the English Lan- 
guage, (N. Y.) Stechert 1.00 

Johnson, C. F., Forms of English Poetry, American Book 

Co 1.00 

*Krapp, G. F., Modern English, Scribner 1.25 

Lounsbury, T. R., History of the English Language, Holt 1.12 
Nesfield, J. C, English Grammar Past and Present, Mac- 
millan 1.10 

*Skeat, W. W., An Etymological Dictionary of the English 

Language, (1910), Oxford University Press 9.50 

*Skeat, W. W., Principles of English Etymology, (2 

Vols.), Clarendon Press 5.35 

Sweet, H., New English Grammar, (2 parts), Clarendon 

Press 2.65 

*Whitney, W. D., Essentials of English Grammar, Ginn .75 



1 The asterisk indicates that the book is especially valuable. 
143 



144 



Bl BLIOGRA PH \ 



BOOKS ON LITERATURE 



Adams, O. F., Dictionary of American Authors, Hough- 
ton $3.00 

Alexander, W. J., Introduction to Browning, Ginn 1.00 

* Atlas of America, Historical and Literary (Everyman's 

Lib.) Dutton 35 

* Atlas of Europe, Historical and Literary (Everyman's 

Lib.) Dutton .35 

Bates, Arlo, Talks on the Study of Literature, Houghton 1.50 
Beers, H. A., English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury, Holt 2.00 

Beers, H. A., English Romanticism in the Nineteenth 

Century, Holt 1,75 

Berdoe, Edward, The Browning Cyclopedia, Macmillan 3.50 

Bradley, A. C, Shakespearean Tragedy, Macmillan. . . . 3.25 
Bronson, W. D., English Poems, (4 Vols.), University of 

Chicago Press 6.00 

Brooke, S. A., History of Early English Literature, Mac- 
millan 2.50 

Child, C. G., Early Plays, (Riv. Ser.), Houghton 40 

Corson, H., Introduction to Shakespeare, Heath 1.50 

Corson, H., Introduction to the Study of Robert Brown- 
ing's Poetry, Heath 1.50 

Cross, W. L., Development of the English Novel, Mac- 
millan 1.50 

Dixon, W. M., Tennyson Primer, Dodd, Mead 1.25 

Dowden, E., Shakspere: His Mind and Art, Harper. . . 1.75 
Dowden, Edw., The French Revolution and the English 

Poets, Scribner 1.25 

* English Men of Letters, ed. by J. Morley, (39 Vols.), 

Harper . 29.25 

Fairchild, A. H. R., The Making of Poetry, Putnam. . . 1.50 
Furnivall and Munro, Shakespeare: Life and Work, 

CasseU 35 

*Gayley, C. M., Classic Myths in English Literature, 

Ginn, Revised Edition. 1.50 

Gayley, C. M., Representative English Comedies, Mac- 
millan 1.50 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 145 

Gosse, E. W., History of Eighteenth Century Literature, 

Macmillan $1.50 

Gummere, F. B., Old English Ballads (Athen. Press), 

Ginn 80 

Gummere, F. B., The Beginnings of Poetry, Macmillan. . 3.00 

Gummere, F. B., The Oldest English Epic, Macmillan. . 1.10 
Maccallum, M. W., Shakespeare's Roman Plays and their 

Background, Macmillan 2.50 

Mackail, J. W,, Latin Literature, Scribner 1.25 

Manly, J. M., English Poetry, Ginn 1.50 

Manly, J. M., English Prose, Ginn 1.50 

Minto, W., Manual of English Prose Literature, Ginn. . . 1.50 
Neilson, W. A., Essentials of Poetry, Houghton Mifflin 

Co 1.25 

Newcomer, A. G., Twelve Centuries of English Prose and 

Poetry, Scott, Foresman 1.75 

Page, C. H., Chief American Poets, Houghton 1.75 

*Perry, Bliss, The Study of Prose Fiction, Houghton, Mif- 
flin Co. 1.25 

Pollard, A. W., English Miracle Plays, Clarendon Press 1.90 
Pound, L., The Periods of English Literature, University 

of Nebraska Press .75 

Raleigh, W., Shakespeare, Macmillan .50 

Raleigh, W., Wordsworth, (London), Arnold 2.00 

Ryland, T., Chronological Outlines of English Literature, 

Macmillan 1.75 

Saintsbury, G., History of Elizabethan Literature, Mac- 
millan 1.75 

Saintsbury, G., History of Nineteenth Century Literature, 

Macmillan 1.50 

Schelling, F. E., English Literature during the Life- 
time of Shakespeare, Holt 2.00 

*Schmidt, Alex., Shakespeare-Lexicon (3d. ed.) (2 Vols.) 

Stechert 8.00 

Schoneld, W. H., English Literature from the Norman 

Conquest to Chaucer, Macmillan 1.50 

Sellar, W. J., Roman Poets of the Augustan Age, Virgil, 

Clarendon Press 2.25 

Stedman, E. C, American Anthology, Houghton 3.00 

Stedman, E. C, Victorian Anthology, Houghton 3.00 



146 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Stephenson, H. T., Shakespeare's London, Holt $2.00 

Taine, H., History of English Literature, Holt 1.75 

*Taylor, H. O., Ancient Ideals, Macmillan 5.00 

Thayer, W. R., Best English Plays, Ginn 1.40 

*Thorndike, A. H., Tragedy, Houghton, Mifflin Co 1.50 

Tolman, A. H., Questions on Shakespeare, University of 

Chicago Press Part I, 75 cents; Part II, 1.00 

Walker, Hugh, The Literature of the Victorian Era, 

Cambridge University Press 3.50 

Ward, T. H., English Poets, (4 Vols.), Macmillan 4.00 

Wendell, B., Literary History of America, Scribner 3.00 

Woodbridge, Elizabeth, The Drama: its Law and its 

Technique, Allyn and Bacon .80 

ENGLISH CLASSICS 

Addison, J., Spectator, Macmillan 1.50 

Arnold, M., Essays in Criticism, (2 Vols.), Macmillan. . 3.00 

Austen, J., Works, (5 Vols.), Putnam 2.50 

Bacon, Essays, ed. by West, Putnam 1.00 

Blackmore, Lorna Doone, Ginn .65 

Boswell, Life of Johnson, (2 Vols.), (Everyman's Lib.), 

Dutton 70 

Browne, Sir T., Religio Medici and Urn Burial, (Every- 
man's Lib.), Dutton .35 

Browning, R., Complete Works, (Cambridge ed.), Hough- 
ton 3.00 

Bryant, W. C, Poetical Works, (Household ed.), Apple- 
ton 1.50 

Bunyan, J., Pilgrim's Progress, (Everyman's Lib.), 

Dutton 35 

Burke, E., Selected Works, (3 Vols.), Macmillan 3.60 

Burns, R., Poems, Songs and Letters, (Globe ed.), Mac- 
millan 1.75 

Byron, Lord, Poems, (Cambridge ed.), Houghton 3.00 

Carlyle, T., Heroes and Hero-Worship, (Athen. Press), 

Ginn 80 

Carlyle, T., Sartor Resartus, (Athen. Press), Ginn .80 

Chaucer, G., The Student's Chaucer, (ed. by Skeat), Mac- 
millan , , . < . . 1.75 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 147 

Clemens, S. L., (Mark Twain), Works, (Complete sets, 

18 Vols.), Harper $33.50 

Coleridge, S. T., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan 1.75 
Cooper, J. F., The Spy, The Pilot, and the five "Leather- 
stocking Tales," (5 Vols.), (Everyman's Lib.), 

Dutton 1.75 

Copper, W., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan. . . 1.75 
Defoe, D., Robinson Crusoe, (Everyman's Lib.), Dut- 
ton 35 

De Quincey, T., Confessions of an English Opium Eater, 

and Select Essays, (3 Vols.), Scribner 5.00 

Dickens, C, Works, (20 Vols.), Macmillan 20.00 

Dryden, J., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan. . . 1.75 

Emerson, R. W., Works, (5 Vols.), (Bohn Lib.), BeU. . . 4.35 
Evans, Mary A., ("George Eliot"), Works, (12 Vols, at 

.90), Harper 10.80 

Goldsmith, O., Miscellaneous Works, (Globe ed.), Mac- 
millan 1.75 

Gray, T., Selections, (Athen. Press), Ginn .80 

Harte, B., Complete Poems, (Cabinet ed.), Houghton. . . 1.00 
Harte, B., The Luck of Roaring Camp, etc., Houghton 1.00 
Hawthorne, N., Works, (8 Vols.), (Popular ed.), Hough- 
ton 10.00 

Holmes, O.W., Works, (14 Vols.), (Riverside ed.), Hough- 
ton 21.00 

Howells, W. D., A Hazard of New Fortunes, (2 Vols.), 

Harper 1.50 

Howells, W. D., The Rise of Silas Lapham, Houghton. . 1.50 

Irving, W., Works, (10 Vols.), Crowell 10.00 

Johnson, S., Lives of the Poets, (2 Vols.), (World's Clas- 
sics), Oxford Press 11 .00 

Keats, J., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan 1.75 

Kingsley, C, Westward Ho, Macmillan 1.00 

Kipling, R., Works, (15 Vols.), Doubleday 15.00 

Lamb, C, Essays of Elia and Eliana, Bell 1.00 

Lamb, C, Tales from Shakespeare, Macmillan. 1.50 

Lanier, S., Poems, Scribner 2.00 

Longfellow, H. W., Complete Poetical and Dramatic 

Works, (Cambridge ed.), Houghton . 2.00 

Lowell, J. R., Poems, (Household ed.), Houghton. .... 1.50 



148 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Lowell, J. R., Prose Works, (7 Vols.), (Riverside ed.), 

Houghton $10.50 

Macaulay, T. B., Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous 

Essays, (3 Vols.), Houghton 3.75 

Macpherson, J., Ossian, (Canterbury Poets), (London), 

Scott 25 

Malory, Sir T., Morte d' Arthur, (Globe ed.), Macmillan 1.75 

Meredith, G., Works, (16 Vols.), Scribner 24.00 

Milton, J., Poetical Works, ed. by Beeching, Oxford 

Press, .50 

or by Masson, Macmillan 1.75 

or by Moody, Houghton 2.00 , 

Poe, E. A., Complete Works, (17 Vols.), (Virginia ed.), 

Crowell 21.00 

Pope, A., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan 1.75 

Reade, C, The Cloister and the Hearth, Page 1.50 

Rossetti, D. G., Poems, Crowell .75 

Ruskin, J., Crown of Wild Olive, Ethics of the Dust, 

Sesame and Lilies, (3 Vols.), Merrill 4.50 

Scott, W., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan 1.75 

Scott, W., Waverley Novels, (12 Vols.), Estes 12.00 

Shakespeare, W., Works, ed. by Craig, (Oxford ed.), 

Clarendon Press 1.50 

Shakespeare, W., Works, ed. by Rolfe, (40 Vols.), Ameri- 
can Book Co each. . .56 

Shelley, B. P., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan. 1.75 

Spenser, E., Complete Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan. . 1.75 

Stevenson, R. L., (27 Vols.), Scribner 27.00 

Swift, J., Gullivers Travels, (ed. by Scott), Bell 1.00 

Swift, J., Tale of a Tub, (ed. by Scott), Bell 1.00 

. , a <^ a f Crowell 1.75 

Swinburne, A. C, Poems, .„ „ . . TT i ru . 

[ (6 \ ols.), Harper 12.00 

Taylor, B., Poetical Works, (Household ed.), Hough- 
ton 1.50 

Tennyson, A., Works, (Globe ed.), Macmillan 1.75 

Thackeray, W. M., Complete Works, (10 Vols.), Estes. . 10.00 

Thomson, J., Poetical Works, Oxford Press 1.00 

Thoreau, H., W olden, Houghton 3.00 

Walton, I., Complete Angler, (Everyman's Lib.), Dutton .35 

Webster, D., Great Speeches and Orations, Little 3.00 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 149 

Whittier, J. G., Complete Poetical Works, (Cambridge 

ed. ) , Houghton $2.00 

Wordsworth, W., Poetical Works, (Globe ed.), Maemillan 1.75 

TRANSLATIONS 

The Bible, (Authorized Version), "International," Win- 
ston 1.50 

The Modern Reader's Bible, (ed. by R. G. Moulton), Mae- 
millan 2.00 

The Odyssey, transl. by Palmer, Houghton .75 

The Iliad, transl. by Butcher and Lang, Maemillan 1.50 

The Judgment of Socrates, transl. by More, (Riv. Ser.), 

Houghton .15 

The Divine Comedy, transl. by Longfellow, (3 Vols.), 

Houghton 4.50 

The Song of Roland, transl. by Butler, (Riv. Ser.), Hough- 
ton .40 

Don Quixote, transl. by Matteux, (2 Vols.), Maemillan 2.00 

The Nibelungenlied, transl. by Shumway, Houghton .... .75 

Goethe's Faust, transl. by Taylor, Houghton 2.50 

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, trans, by Fitzgerald, 

Dutton 1.00 

The Kalevala, transl. by Kirby, (2 Vols.), (Everyman's 

Lib.), Dutton 70 

The Mabinogion, transl. by Lady Guest, (Everyman's 

Lib.), Dutton , 35 



PART II 



A BRIEF SURVEY OF AMERICAN 
LITERATURE 



CHAPTER VIII 



EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 

The First Settlers. — The early settlers in America came 
from England at two distinct periods in her history, which 
were characterized by different intellectual and social con- 
ditions. Naturally, therefore, they established in the new 
world two distinct types of civilization. The settlers who 
came to Virginia in 1607 were Elizabethan Englishmen, con- 
temporaries of Shakespeare. They were bold, daring men 
with a certain flavor of romance about them. Some were 
moved by the spirit of adventure merely. Some were gentle- 
men of broken fortune in search of easily acquired wealth. 
A few were idlers and criminals. They did not expect to make 
their homes in the new world, but hoped soon to return to 
England rich and influential. The Pilgrims, on the other 
hand, who settled in Plymouth in 1620, and the Puritans, 
who established the Massachusetts Bay Colony a few years 
later, came from an England which had already been largely 
transformed by the new religious influences of Puritanism. 
They were stern men of strong religious principles, lovers 
of freedom, exiles, seeking in an unknown and inhospitable 
land a place where they could establish permanent homes, 
live independent lives, and worship God in their own way. 
They were inspired not by dreams of wealth but by dreams 
of freedom. 

Conditions Unfavorable for Literature. — In neither case 
were conditions favorable for the development of litera- 
ture. The New Englanders were too busy cutting down the 

153 



154 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



forests, building houses, clearing the fields of stumps and 
rocks, planting and cultivating crops, and defending their 
lives against wild beasts and Indians, to spend much time 
in writing books. Among the Virginians the conditions of 
life were easier, but the population did not settle in village 
communities favorable to the intellectual contact and ex- 
tended education which develop a literary class. Nor did 
they live under the primitive conditions which develop such 
popular traditional literature as the old English ballads and 
romances. After exploring the country and finding that 
wealth could not be gained in a day, they took up large 
landed estates, and cultivated vast tobacco plantations. 
They lived the active life of the open air in close contact 
with nature, given to free and open hospitality when oppor- 
tunity served, but little inclined to study and reflection. 
They developed a literature even less rapidly than the Pil- 
grims and Puritans. 

(a) HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL WRITING 

John Smith (1579-1631). — The earliest writing was his- 
torical and biographical. The colonists sent back to Eng- 
land descriptions of the country and accounts of their frontier 
life. Captain John Smith, for example, wrote for the pur- 
pose of advertising Virginia. In 1608 he sent to a friend in 
London A True Relation of such Occurrences and Accidents 
of Noate as Happened in Virginia since the first Planting 
of that Colony, and later, in 1624, published his General 
History of Virginia. Smith was a typical Elizabethan 
Englishman. His account, therefore, is enthusiastic and 
often exaggerated. Sometimes, also, he enlivens it with 
the interest of romance. The History of Virginia contains, 
for example, the famous story of how, when Smith was 



EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 155 



about to be killed by the Indians, his life was saved by the 
Indian Princess, Pocahontas. 

" Having feasted him after their best barbarous manner, a long 
consultation was held; but the conclusion was, two great stones 
were brought before Powhattan. Then as many as could laid 
hands upon him, dragged him to the stones and thereon laid his 
head. x\nd being ready with their clubs to beate out his braines, 
Pocahontas the King's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could 
prevaile, got his head in her armes, and laid her owne upon his 
to save him from death; whereat the Emperor was contented he 
should live." 

New England Chroniclers. — The early chroniclers of 
New England were of a different temper. They wrote not 
for entertainment nor to advertise the country. They told 
the plain facts without any of the glamour of romance. The 
most important accounts are William Bradford's Of Plym- 
outh Plantation and John Winthrop's History of New 
England. Bradford was governor of Plymouth Colony; 
Winthrop was governor of the neighboring colony of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, and later of the United Colonies of Massa- 
chusetts. Both histories are straightforward and matter- 
of-fact accounts of the hardships and heroism of the earliest 
settlers. Some of the descriptions — The first Encounter 
with the Indians, for example — are vigorous and spirited. 

Samuel Sewall (1652-1730). — One of the most remark- 
able books of the period is the Diary of Samuel Sewall. 
Sewall was a judge who pronounced sentence of death on 
some of the Salem witches in 1692, and who afterwards 
publicly repented of his action. His Diary is a confused 
mass of notes on all manner of subjects, important and 
unimportant — the weather, the* declaration of war between 
France and England, the death of a pussy-cat, the execution 
of witches, the treasure of Captain Kidd. The entries are 



156 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



mostly minute and unimaginative, but sometimes they 
make a genuine appeal to our human sympathies. The 
book throws much light upon the life of the time. 

John Woolman (1729-1772). — Along with SewalPs Diary 
must be mentioned The Journal of John Woolman, an 
artless account of the life of a sincere and simple-minded 
New Jersey Quaker. He was a tailor and itinerant mis- 
sionary, going about preaching mercy and justice and love. 
He seems to have been lowly born and self-educated, but 
he writes with the refinement of a gentleman and the sim- 
plicity of an artist. Charles Lamb said, " Get the writings 
of John Woolman by heart, and love the early Quakers." 

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). — The early chroniclers, 
however, can hardly be said to have produced genuine 
literature. Not until near the end of the colonial period 
did America produce writers of history and biography whose 
books are still widely read. Of these, Benjamin Franklin 
was by far the most distinguished. He was born and reared 
in Boston, but lived most of his life in Philadelphia among 
the Quakers. He began life in poverty; but by strength 
of character and steady industry, he gradually rose to 
eminence in his own country and in the end became a celeb- 
rity in the social centers of Europe and an ambassador to 
the courts of kings. The life of this shrewd practical Yankee 
reads like a romance. 

Franklin's Autobiography. — His life may best be read 
in his own Autobiography, a simple, straightforward, often 
witty account of a " self-made man." Franklin wrote it 
partly for the purpose of instructing his grandchildren in 
the secret of worldly success and partly, he tells us, to gratify 
his own vanity. He explains in detail how he rose from 
obscurity to fame and insists that the same thing can be 
done by any one who is willing to take the trouble. Even 



EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 



157 



his ability to write he gained not by inspiration but by 
patient painstaking training, making notes on Addison's 
Essays and afterwards writing them out in his own words 
for comparison with the original or translating stories into 
verse and, when the original had been forgotten, translating 
the verse back into prose. The tone of the book has been 
criticised as being too worldly-wise. It lacks idealism and 
spirituality. But it gives very useful advice in the matter 
of making a living ; it is full of genuine human interest ; 
and it has an important historical background. It is the 
only book of the period before the American Revolution 
which is still widely read. 

Poor Richard's Almanac. — Of the other writings of 
Franklin — and they were many — Poor Richard's Almanac 
was the most influential. This work brought him his first 
fame and its continued production maintained a steady 
popularity for twenty-five years. The wise and often witty 
sayings scattered through this almanac impressed Franklin's 
shrewd, practical philosophy not only upon his own genera- 
tion but upon later generations also. Many of his pithy 
maxims are still known and quoted by everybody. 

"God helps them that help themselves." 
"It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright." 
"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead." 
"Honesty is the best policy." 

"Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." 
"Great talkers are little doers." 

"If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some, 
for he who goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing." 

Many of Franklin's sayings have almost become a part of 
the national consciousness. 



158 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



(b) THEOLOGICAL WRITINGS 

Cotton Mather (1663-1728). — The chief interest of our 
Puritan fathers was in religion. They were exiles for the 
sake of religion. God was their lawgiver ; the Bible, their 
statute book. The ministers were their most learned and 
influential men. The clergy actually dominated the entire 
life of the community. Much therefore of the intellectual 
strength of the colonists went into the writing of ecclesiastical 
works. Such is Cotton Mather's great book Magnalia Christi 
Americana; or The Ecclesiastical History of New England 
from its First Planting in the year 1620 unto the Year of our 
Lord 1698. This book contains the lives of governors, 
magistrates, and divines ; an account of Harvard University 
with the lives of its graduates ; the acts of church synods ; 
a record of divine providences; a history of the afflictions 
and disturbances of the church; and much besides. It 
was an influential book in its time, and all of the great 
writers of New England were more or less familiar with it. 
Longfellow, for instance, drew from it the subject matter 
for his poem, The Phantom Ship. To-day it is a book which 
everybody knows about, and few, except specialists in his- 
tory, ever read. 

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). — The most famous of 
all the theologians was Jonathan Edwards. He made a 
wonderful reputation for clear and logical thinking. In 
his book on The Freedom of the Will, he maintained that 
man is not a free agent, that he may not make a free choice 
between right and wrong, but must do what God has decided 
beforehand he shall do. There was no more influential 
book published in colonial times. Even those who did not 
accept his conclusions found it hard to answer his arguments. 
As a preacher, also, Edwards was remarkable. God and 



EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 



159 



Heaven and Hell were as real to him as Northampton, 
Massachusetts, where he lived. His vivid descriptions of 
the torments of the damned filled his hearers with terror. 
His much-quoted sermon on " Sinners in the Hands of an 
Angry God " gives the impression that his idea of God was 
altogether dreadful. This, however, is not quite true. He 
also looked upon God as the most lovable being in the 
universe, and delighted in the peace and happiness of the 
saints in Heaven. 

"But the foundation of the Christian's peace is everlasting; it 
is what no time, no change, can destroy. It will remain when the 
body dies ; it will remain when the mountains depart and the hills 
shall be removed, and when the heavens shall be rolled together as 
a scroll. The fountain of his comfort shall never be diminished, 
and the stream shall never be dried. His comfort and joy is like a 
living spring in the soul, a well of water springing up to everlasting 
life." 

(c) POETRY 

The Bay Psalm Book (1640). — The early colonists wrote 
very little poetry and what they did write is hardly worthy 
the name. The first book of the kind, The Bay Psalm Book, 
was the attempt of three men to put the Psalms into meter 
and rime. The following are typical stanzas : 

"The rivers on of Babilon, 

there where wee did sit down, 
Yea, even then wee mourned when 
we remembered Sion." 

"The earth Jehova's is 
and the fullness of it ; 
The habitable world and they 
that thereupon doe sit." 



160 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Earliest Poems. — The earliest writer of poetry other 
than hymns seems to have been Mrs. Anne Bradstreet, 
whose poems appeared first in London under the title The 
Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America, etc. (1650). Her 
poems were highly praised in her day, but are read only from 
curiosity now. Another popular book in its time was The 
Day of Doom (1662) by Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705). 
It is a gloomy and terrible picture of the Last Judgment. 
The following stanza is characteristic : 

"They wring their hands, their caitiff -hands 

and gnash their teeth for terror ; 
They cry, they roar for anguish sore, 

and gnaw their tongues for horror. 
But get away without delay, 

Christ pities not your cry ; 
Depart to Hell, there may you yell, 

and roar eternally." 

We laugh at this now, but it caused genuine terror in the 
New England of the seventeenth century. 

The Hartford Wits. — No poetry really worthy of atten- 
tion was written before the period of the Revolutionary 
War, and not much of importance then. Timothy Dwight 
(1752-1817), a grandson of Jonathan Edwards, wrote a 
patriotic song called Columbia, and a long dull epic entitled 
The Conquest of Canaan. He is not remembered so much for 
these, however, as for the fine hymn beginning : 

"I love thy kingdom, Lord. 
The house of thy abode, 
The church our blest Redeemer saved 
With his own precious blood." 

This hymn is still sung in our churches. Also, John Trum- 
bull (1750-1831), a prodigy who passed his entrance examina- 



EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 



161 



tions for Yale College at seven years of age, wrote McFingal, 
a satire of Revolutionary days. It is after the manner of 
Butler's Hudibras. Joel Barlow (1754-1812) wrote an elabo- 
rate epic called The Columbiad and a mock-heroic poem 
on the Hasty Pudding. By the irony of fate the elaborate 
epic is forgotten and the mock-heroics remembered. These 
three men are known as the " Hartford Wits." 

Philip Freneau (1752-1832). — The most original of the 
early poets was Philip Freneau. The " Hartford Wits " 
wrote in the conventional manner of the eighteenth century 
in England, using either the heroic couplet of Pope or the 
satiric couplet of Butler. Freneau belongs rather to the 
romantic school of Burns and Coleridge and Wordsworth, 
whom he really preceded in time. His principal volume 
appeared in the same year (1786) that Burns published his 
first volume of poems and twelve years before the publica- 
tion of The Lyrical Ballads of Coleridge and Wordsworth. 
Besides his patriotic satires against the British and the 
Royalists, his most memorable poems are The House of 
Night, a grimly imaginative poem akin to the work of 
Coleridge and Poe, Eutaw Springs, & poem in praise of 
American bravery, The Indian Burying Ground, a poem 
on the pathos of a vanishing race, and The Wild Honey- 
suckle, a very musical little nature lyric. Most people 
remember Freneau as the author of The Wild Honeysuckle. 
The poem is worth quoting. 

Fair flower, that dost so comely grow, 

Hid in this silent, dull retreat, 
Untouched thy honeyed blossoms blow, 
Unseen thy little branches greet ; 
No roving foot shall crush thee here, 
No busy hand provoke a tear. 

M 



162 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



By nature's self in white arrayed, 

She bade thee shun the vulgar eye, 
And planted here the guardian shade, 
And sent soft waters murmuring by ; 
Thus quietly thy summer goes, 
Thy days declining to repose. 

Smit with those charms, that must decay, 

I grieve to see your future doom ; 
They died — nor were those flowers more gay, 
The flowers that did in Eden bloom ; 
Unpitying frosts and autumn's power 
Shall leave no vestige of this flower. 

From morning sun and evening dews 

At first thy little being came ; 
If nothing once, you nothing lose, 
For when you die you are the same ; 
The space between is but an hour, 
The frail duration of a flower. 



{d) ORATORY AND POLITICAL PROSE 

The Orators. — The Revolution produced much oratory, 
some of which has been preserved and deserves recognition 
as literature. The principal orators were James Otis and 
Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, and Patrick Henry of 
Virginia. The speeches of Otis have not been preserved in 
the form in which they were pronounced, and only fragments 
of the speeches of Samuel Adams have come down to us. 
Both men, however, were very effective orators. John 
Adams, who heard Otis speak, says of him : 

" Otis was a flame of fire ! With a promptitude of classical 
allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events 



EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE 163 



and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his 
eyes into futurity, a rapid torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried 
all before him. American independence was then and there born. 
Every man of an unusually crowded audience appeared to me to 
go away ready to take up arms against Writs of Assistance. . . . 
James Otis then and there breathed into this nation the breath of 
life." 

Samuel Adams was much the same kind of a speaker. Pat- 
rick Henry's fervid and impassioned oratory is well repre- 
sented by his famous speech in the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses, which closes with the words, " Give me liberty or 
give me death." This speech has been committed to memory 
by nearly every schoolboy. 

Political Writers. — Political prose also flourished. 
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) wrote the Declaration of 
Independence, the Summary View of the Rights of British 
America, and an instructive Autobiography. Thomas Paine's 
Common Sense and The Crisis did much to keep up the spirit 
of the Americans in the darkest times of the Revolution. 
Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804), James Madison (1751- 
1836), and John Jay (1745-1829) together published The 
Federalist Papers, a series of brilliant and effective argu- 
ments in behalf of the adoption of the constitution. 

Suggested Readings 1 

Franklin : Autobiography. 
Edwards : Sermons, Selections. 
Woolman : Journal. 
Early American Orations, 1760-1824. 

1 These books are all to be found in the Pocket Classics Series, published 
by The Macmillan Company. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD, 1800-1860 

Intellectual Independence. — A great national literature 
is the outgrowth of a vigorous national life. No vitally 
characteristic American literature could be expected during 
the colonial period. Even after America had gained her 
political independence, she was slow to achieve her intel- 
lectual independence and to produce a truly American 
literature written about distinctly American themes and in 
a distinctly American manner. We had to develop a na- 
tional feeling before we could produce a genuinely national 
literature. Emerson's address on The American Scholar 
(1837) is often called our intellectual declaration of in- 
dependence. 

(a) ROMANCE 

Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). — The beginnings 
of a genuinely imaginative literature, however, may be seen 
as early as the work of Charles Brockden Brown. In some 
respects, he was dependent on English models. He wrote 
romances after the fashion of Mrs. Radcliffe's Mysteries 
of Udolpho, full of horror and mystery and psychological 
analysis. But he laid the scenes of his stories in his own 
country and made use of the romantic material of colonial 
life and Indian adventure. Furthermore, his treatment of 
horror and mystery and adventure points directly to Poe and 
Hawthorne and Cooper. His most important romances are 

164 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



165 



Wieland, Arthur Mervyn, and Edgar Huntley. The plot 
of Wieland centers about a man who listens to what he 
thinks are supernatural voices until he is persuaded to 
murder his wife and children. The book contains much 
psychological analysis. The most noteworthy part of 
Arthur Mervyn is the famous description of a yellow fever 
-epidemic in Philadelphia. It is done in the manner of De- 
foe's Journal of the Plague Year. Edgar Huntley, which 
is generally considered the best, recounts a series of adven- 
tures in the wild forests of Pennsylvania. It introduces the 
Indian, and pictures with rare skill the scenery and life of 
the woods. 

Washington Irving (1783-1859). — The work of Charles 
Brockden Brown, however, cannot compare in excellence 
with the work of Washington Irving. Irving was a far 
greater artist and had a wider experience of men and coun- 
tries. He was brought up in New York City, but was not 
exclusively a city boy. At that time the town had less than 
thirty thousand inhabitants, the country was easily ac- 
cessible, and the boy often took long rambles along the 
Hudson, sometimes as far into the country as Sleepy Hollow. 
He often declared his fondness for rural life. Travel also 
widened his interests and his knowledge. He spent two 
years of his early manhood in Europe and later resided for 
seventeen years in Spain and England. To the free whole- 
some life of the new world he added the polish of European 
culture. 

Irving' s Works. — In many respects he was a disciple of 
Addison. His first work, Salmagundi, was a periodical 
after the manner of The Spectator, its avowed purpose being 
" to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, 
and castigate the age." The Sketch Book also has much in 
common with The Spectator. Irving, however, was not a 



166 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



slavish imitator. Unlike Addison, he was romantic in tem- 
perament, and was reared in a new civilization. He loved 
medieval manners and customs, medieval mystery and 
superstition. Indeed, he threw about everything the charm 
of romance. Knickerbocker's History of New York, a 
genuinely American book, gives us the romance of the early 
Dutch settlements. Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of 
Sleepy Hollow express the romance of the country along the 
Hudson River. Other parts of The Sketch Book and Brace- 
bridge Hall present the romance of old English manners and 
customs. The Life and Voyages of Columbus (1828), The 
Conquest of Grenada (1829), and The Alhambra (1832) are 
pervaded by the romance of medieval Spain and the Sara- 
cens. A Tour on the Prairies expresses the romance of 
the great west. Later works are The Life of Oliver Gold- 
smith (1849), Mahomet and his Successors (1849), and The 
Life of Washington (1855-1859). Irving has been called 
the " Father of American Letters." He was closely bound 
to the " storied past " of the old world, but some of his 
themes were distinctively American, and an American at- 
mosphere is about them all. " He was the first to reveal 
America as a land of legend and romance." Thackeray 
calls him " the first ambassador whom the New World of 
letters sent to the Old." 

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). — James Fenimore 
Cooper is more distinctly American than Irving. He por- 
trays preeminently the romance of the frontier, of life in the 
open, of the struggle of civilization with the wilderness in 
clearing forests and establishing settlements, of the adven- 
tures of traders and trappers with wild beasts and Indians. 
Cooper's characters, especially his " females," as he calls 
them, are sometimes uninteresting, his style is often crude, 
his moralizing is quite unrelieved by any sense of humor. 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



167 



But he depicts in a stirring manner the romance of daring 
deeds, — his heroes are large-hearted and commanding, his 
imagination is sane and wholesome. His books interpret 
the vigor and sincerity of early America. As a literary 
artist Cooper was inferior to Scott and Stevenson, but in 
the vivid quality of his imagination his kinship with them 
is evident. His stories are popular in Europe as well as in 
America. 

Cooper's Stories. — Cooper wrote thirty-two stories in 
all, historical romances, romances of the sea, and romances 
of the frontier. The Spy is a story of the Revolution. 
The hero, Harvey Birch, is one of Washington's confidential 
agents who risks his life as a spy without honor or reward, 
Nay, he is branded as a traitor. His loyalty is suspected 
even by his own countrymen. It is the price of efficiency, 
and he pays the price heroically. The principal stories of 
the sea are The Pilot , The Two Admirals, and Wing and 
Wing. Of all Cooper's stories, however, the most popular 
are the romances of the frontier, especially the Leather 
Stocking Tales. This series of five romances centers about 
the experience of Natty Bumpo, a woodsman who is known 
under the various names of Leather Stocking, Hawkeye, 
Deerslayer, Pathfinder, and La Longue Carabine. The 
series should be read in the following order, The Deerslayer, 
The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, 
The Prairie. 

The Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). — The ro- 
mance of mystery and terror is represented by the tales of 
Edgar Allan Poe, a strange, abnormal genius. Many of 
these tales, such as The Gold Bug, The Murders in the Rue 
Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Roget, and The Purloined 
Letter, are detective stories not unlike Dr. Conan Doyle's^ 
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. MS. Found in a Bottle and 



168 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



A Descent into a Maelstrom are tales of adventure with 
the added interest of semi-scientific speculation. The Black 
Cat is a tale of pure terror. Fantastic and terrible also 
are the supernatural tales, Ligeia and The Fall of the 
House of Usher, the latter of which is usually considered 
Poe's best story. These tales are all comparatively short. 
Indeed, Poe has often been called " the father of the short 
story. " 

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). — The most delicate 
and charming of all our early romancers was Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. His ancestors were Puritans, and their moral 
sensitiveness and feeling for the supernatural were strong 
in his blood. One of his ancestors had taken part in the 
Salem witchcraft trials and had been the object of a witch's 
curse. Hawthorne's imagination played about this cir- 
cumstance and about the entire New England past. More- 
over, his retiring life made it easy for him to be a dreamer 
and led him naturally to a study of the problems of the 
inner life. There is an atmosphere of mystery about his 
characters, and the events are invested with a symbolic 
significance. The moral purpose is always strong. Every- 
thing, however, is managed with such a delicate imaginative 
touch that the stories seem neither fantastic nor morbid. 
Just " a slight, delicate and evanescent flavor of the mar- 
velous " is thrown over the events " to mellow the lights 
and deepen and enrich the shadows of the picture." 

His Short Stories. — Many of Hawthorne's romances are 
short stories written with delicate imagination, and in a 
graceful style. The best are found in Twice-Told Tales, 
The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, and Mosses 
from an Old Manse. Some of these are symbolic or alle- 
.gorical, such as The Great Stone Face, The Ambitious Guest, 
The Great Carbuncle. Others are legendary and traditional, 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



169 



such as The Gentle Boy, The Gray Champion, and The May- 
pole of Merry Mount. Hawthorne gives us, however, the 
romance and not the history of early New England, just as 
Irving gives us the romance of the early Dutch settlements 
in New York or as Cooper gives us the romance of the 
frontier. The Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales are 
modern versions of Greek and Roman myths. 

The Long Romances. — Hawthorne's most important 
contributions to literature are four long romances. The 
Scarlet Letter is the story of two sinful hearts, one openly 
persecuted, the other inwardly tormented by conscience. 
For analysis of the human heart and for dramatic intensity, 
it is the most powerful of them all. The House of the Seven 
Gables is not so intense, but is pleasanter reading. The 
story seems to have been suggested by the fact that one 
of Hawthorne's ancestors, who took part in the witch trials, 
was put under the curse of one of the unfortunate victims. 
Hawthorne uses the circumstance to illustrate the theme of 
how " the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children." 
The Blithedale Romance was suggested by Hawthorne's 
experience in the socialistic community at Brook Farm. 
It is less symbolic than the others. The scene of The Marble 
Faun is laid in Italy. It is a story of impulsive wrongdoing 
and the consequent suffering, the birth of a soul through 
the experiences of sin. The charm of all the stories lies 
largely in the delicacy with which the imagination plays 
about the mysteries of life. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896). — In one conspicuous 
case romance was used with a definite moral purpose. Mrs. 
Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is so full of moral conviction 
and of the spirit of the propagandist that it is perhaps more 
a novel of purpose than a romance. It was consciously 
directed against the institution of slavery and had an in- 



170 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



calculable influence in crystallizing the antislavery senti- 
ment. The book was enormously popular and the drama- 
tized version has continued to attract large audiences almost 
to our own day. As a type of art, the book marks the transi- 
tion from the romance to the realistic novel. 

(b) POETRY 

Early Minor Poetry. — Poetry developed much more 
slowly in America than prose romance. Before the pub- 
lication of Bryant's Thanatopsis (1817) little if any important 
verse had been published ; and for a number of years Bryant 
stood alone as our one great poet. The other poets of the 
first third of the nineteenth century are remembered mostly 
for single poems : Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820) for 
The American Flag, Fitz-Green Halleck (1790-1867) for 
Marco Bozzaris, Francis Scott Key (1779-1843) for The Star- 
Spangled Banner, John Howard Payne (1791-1852) for 
Home, Sweet Home, and Samuel Woodworth (1785-1842) 
for The Old Oaken Bucket. 

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878). — Our first great 
American poet was William Cullen Bryant, the son of a 
country physician in western Massachusetts. His formal 
education was meager. He learned Latin from his uncle 
and Greek and mathematics from a neighboring minister, 
who was paid one dollar a week for the boy's board and 
lodging and instruction. Later, Bryant spent seven months 
at Williams College. This completed his formal education. 
His training for poetry came mostly from nature and his 
father's library. The law was his first choice as a career, 
but he soon drifted into journalism and for nearly fifty 
years was editor of the New York Evening Post. He ex- 
erted a strong influence on literature throughout his long 
career. 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



171 



Poetry of Nature and Reflection. — As a poet he is re- 
markable not so much for the quantity and range of his work 
as for its dignity and purity. He wrote comparatively little 
and most of it is nature poetry, reflective in tone. But its 
dignified manner is well sustained and the style always pure 
and finished. Among his best nature lyrics are June, The 
Planting of the Apple Tree, The Death of the Flowers, and 
The Fringed Gentian. The most widely known of the purely 
meditative poems are Thanatopsis and To a Waterfowl. 
Thanatopsis is a reflective poem on death, composed when 
the poet was only seventeen years old. Yet it is not inferior 
to his later work. To a Waterfowl has autobiographical 
interest, for it was the outgrowth of a particular personal 
experience. As Bryant was walking along the country 
road puzzling over the problem of his future and trying to 
determine on a place to begin the practice of law, he saw a 
solitary waterfowl take its flight across the evening sky. 
The picture seemed to him a symbol of himself and his own 
rather melancholy situation, though his tranquil faith drew 
from it a final consolation. 

"He who from zone to zone 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In a long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright." 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), though usually 
thought of as a philosopher and essayist, a leader in the 
transcendental movement (see p. 180), was also one of our 
early poets and needs at least passing mention here. His 
poetry, however, has never been popular and some of it is 
difficult to understand. Many of the poems, such as The 
Sphinx, The Problem, Merlin, Brahma, give expression to 
his half-mystical philosophy. Others, such as The Humble- 



172 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Bee, The Snow Storm, Days, and Wood- Notes, show an 
intimate love of nature. The most passionate of all his 
poems is, perhaps, Threnody, a lament for Emerson's boy 
Waldo, who died at the age of five. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) has been the 
most popular of all our American poets. His simple melo- 
dious verses sang themselves into the hearts of the people, 
touching with beauty their common joys and common 
sorrows. He was not a poet of intense passion or large 
vision. Nor was he strikingly original. He had a wide 
human sympathy, a sure sense of beauty, and a steady 
tranquillity of spirit. He was a scholar and drew most of 
his inspiration from books ; but he was never scholastic 
or technical, because all his learning was vitalized. He did 
much to extend the knowledge of modern languages and 
literatures both by his teaching at Harvard College and by 
his translations and adaptations of particular works. 

Short Poems. — His first volume of poems, Voices of the 
Night, appeared in 1839. It contained such popular favorites 
as Hymn to the Night, A Psalm of Life, The Light of Stars, 
The Reaper and the Flowers, Footsteps of Angels, Flowers, 
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year. Later came the ballads, 
The Skeleton in Armor and The Wreck of the Hesperus; and 
later still some fine lyrics including The Belfry of Bruges 
and The Norman Baron. To 1850 belong Resignation and 
The Building of the Ship. 

Longer Poems. — The most important longer poems are 
Evangeline (1847), Hiawatha (1855), and The Courtship of 
Miles Standish (1858). Evangeline is a sweet pathetic idyl 
of the wanderings of the Acadians. It is also a protest 
against a great wrong done by the English to this innocent 
peasant people. Hiawatha, a romance of Indian life, is not 
a true account of facts, but is an admirable piece of romantic 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



173 



idealization. The Courtship of Miles Standish is a Puritan 
romance, nearly if not quite as popular though not so poetic 
as the other two. The meter of Evangeline and The Court- 
ship of Miles Standish is dactylic hexameter, the meter 
of Virgil's Mneid. Hiawatha is written in the meter of the 
Finnish epic, Kalavala, a four-accent verse unrimed, with 
much repetition of phrase, which gives the poem an archaic 
tone very well suited to the theme. The Tales of a Wayside 
Inn consists mostly of stories from foreign sources. Long- 
fellow knew how to treat simple themes in simple and beau- 
tiful language. 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) succeeded Longfellow 
as Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard. Longfellow, 
through his teaching of the languages and by his poetic 
translations and adaptations, had made the literature of 
continental Europe widely known in America. Lowell 
became the discriminating critic of this new knowledge. 
Much of his writing was therefore in prose (see p. 198), 
but he was a great poet, also. His lyrics and idyls are 
quite as beautiful as Longfellow's. Such are To a Dande- 
lion, Indian Summer Reverie, The First Snowfall, The Vision 
of Sir Launfal. Among his poems of patriotism, The Present 
Crisis and The Harvard Commemoration Ode are especially 
vigorous and lofty. He differs most from Longfellow in 
his satirical poems. His literary satire, The Fable for Critics, 
contains some very witty and penetrating criticism of the 
American writers of his time. His political satire, The 
Biglow Papers, written partly in prose and partly in verse, 
voices Lowell's indignation over the Mexican War. The 
Yankee dialect adds much to the humor and makes the 
satire racy. In the prefatory matter, Lowell inserted the 
famous Yankee idyl, The Courtirt, which has been called 
" one of the freshest bits of pastoral in the language.' 9 



174 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) has been called 
" the laureate of freedom/' Much of his early poetry is 
antislavery poetry. Indeed, the antislavery cause was 
dearer to him than poetry itself, for, like Milton, he deserted 
the Muse at times to give his energy to political journalism. 
Among his best poems are Liberty, Toussaint UOuverture, 
The Slave Ship, Expostulation, The Hunters of Men, Fare- 
well of a Virginia Slave Mother, Ichabod, Laus Deo. Lchabod 
is a scathing rebuke of Webster because of his famous Seventh 
of March Speech, in which Webster spoke in favor of com- 
promise on the slavery question. Whittier afterwards con- 
fessed that he had mistaken the character and motives of 
Webster and tried to do him tardy justice in The Lost Oc- 
casion. This poem should be read in connection with 
Ichabod. Laus Deo is a magnificent song of exultation 
over the constitutional amendment prohibiting slavery. 

Ballads and Lyrics. — The antislavery poetry, however, 
does not represent Whittier at his best as a literary artist. 
The ballads and lyrics are distinctly superior. The Funeral 
Tree of the Sokokis, The Garrison of Cape Ann, Cassandra 
Southwick, Mary Garvin, The Witch' 's Daughter, The Prophecy 
of Samuel Sewall, Abraham Davenport, Mabel Martin, Skipper 
Ireson's Ride, and many more have strong ballad character- 
istics. They are simple, rapid, vivid, dramatic. They are 
based upon tradition. Barbara Frietchie is our best known 
Civil War ballad. The lyrics of home, nature, and religion 
are often very exquisite. Such are The Barefoot Boy, In 
School Days, Telling the Bees, The Songs of Labor, The 
Merrimac, Among the Hills, Hampton Beach, and especially 
The Eternal Goodness. 

Snow Bound. — The most popular and perhaps the most 
perfect of Whittier's poems is Snow Bound : A Winter 
Idyl. John Burroughs calls it " the most faithful picture 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



175 



of our Northern winter that has yet been put into poetry. " 
It also gives the inner life of the New England home, es- 
pecially the home of Whittier's boyhood. Its simple rustic 
pictures and its deep religious faith make it a classic like 
Burns's The Cotter's Saturday Night and Goldsmith's The 
Deserted Village. Carpenter says of it : " He, this old man 
who has been an East Haverhill boy, describes his homestead, 
his brook, his family circle, his schoolmaster, apparently intent 
on naught but the complete accuracy of his narrative, and 
lo ! such is his art that he has drawn the one perfect, im- 
perishable picture of that bright old winter life in that 
strange clime. Diaries, journals, histories, biographies, auto- 
biographies, with the same end in view, are not all together 
so typical as this unique poem of less than a thousand lines. " 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) was not primarily a 
poet but he wrote many humorous pieces in verse and a 
few very exquisite lyrics. The One Hoss Shay, How the 
Old Horse Won the Bet, and The Boys are the best known 
of the humorous pieces. Old Ironsides is a very spirited 
naval lyric. The Chambered Nautilus is a beautiful finished 
lyric of meditation. The Last Leaf, a rich blending of 
smiles and tears, was a favorite with Abraham Lincoln. 

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). — The most musical of 
all the American poets was Edgar Allan Poe, whose prose 
romances we have already considered (see p. 167). His 
poems are melancholy expressions of love and loss and despair. 
They have sometimes been called meaningless. The char- 
acters are often shadowy, and the thought vague and mys- 
terious. The melody, however, is always exquisitely rich 
and the metrical form perfectly finished. The best known 
are The Sleeper, To Helen, Ulalume, The Raven, Lenore, 
Annabel Lee, The Bells, and The Haunted Palace. His 
theory was that poetry has to do with beauty alone, regard- 



176 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



less of life and truth and nature. He defined poetry as 
" the rhythmic creation of the beautiful. " Furthermore, he 
followed his theory consistently. Swinburne, to whom 
Poe's work would naturally appeal, speaks of his poetry as 
" subtle and simple and somber and sweet." 

(c) ORATORY 

In the period between the formation of the government 
and the Civil War, oratory flourished greatly. The prevail- 
ing interest of the people was in politics and government. 
The interpretation of the powers of the constitution, which 
gradually increased the authority and prestige of the national 
government, stimulated the intellectual powers of public 
men. The burning question of slavery, about which all dis- 
cussion centered, aroused the deepest emotions and passions. 
Public opinion was sharply divided, and the issue was fought 
out on both sides with great bitterness. Congress became 
the scene of fierce and prolonged debate. The times de- 
manded the intellect and the personality of great orators. 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852). — The giant among the 
early parliamentary orators was Daniel Webster of Massa- 
chusetts. He was the great champion of the idea of nation- 
ality. He was opposed to the doctrine of " states rights," 
defended the powers of the central government, and argued 
for a broad and liberal interpretation of the powers of the 
constitution. When the question came to its sharpest issue 
in Congress in 1830, and Calhoun and Hayne of South Carolina 
were pressing most vigorously the theory of state sovereignty 
and the doctrine of nullification, Webster delivered in the 
Senate the most effective of all his speeches, the famous 
Reply to Hayne, which closes with the memorable words, 
" Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." 
This speech established the argument for nationality. 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



177 



Forensic and Occasional Orations. — Webster was also a 
great forensic and commemorative orator. His most famous 
forensic addresses are his arguments in behalf of Dartmouth 
College, before the United States Supreme Court in 1818, 
and his speech in the White murder trial at Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1829. The former shows his thorough knowl- 
edge of legal principles and contains some strong emotional 
passages, notably his tribute to Dartmouth College, his alma 
mater. The latter shows his marvelous persuasive power 
over a jury. His description of the White murder, based 
on the facts in evidence, is a striking example of graphic 
oratory. His greatest addresses for special occasions are 
the Plymouth Oration (1820), delivered at the two hundredth 
anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims, the first Bunker 
Hill Oration (1825), given at the laying of the corner-stone 
of the Bunker Hill monument, and Adams and Jefferson 
(1826), a eulogy pronounced shortly after the death of these 
great statesmen, both of whom died on the same day, July 4, 
1826. 

Style. — Webster's speeches belong to the majestic type 
of oratory. The sentences are often long and elaborately 
constructed. Periodic climaxes are carefully developed. 
There is a striving after stately rhythm and rich and me- 
lodious cadences. In the present age of conversational 
oratory, Webster's style often seems strained and artificial. 
Yet his addresses are undeniably eloquent, models, indeed, 
of diction, beautiful in imagery, rich in emotional power. 
Webster had both the power of wide generalization and the 
mastery of innumerable details, a combination which is 
rare indeed. Part, at least, of his work has won a secure 
place in American literature. 

Other Congressional Orators. — Webster's most distin- 
guished contemporaries in Congress were Henry Clay 

N 



178 AMERICAN LITERATURE 

(1777-1852) of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun (1782- 
1850) of South Carolina. Calhoun was the champion of 
state sovereignty and the author of the doctrine of nulli- 
fication. He was a clear and logical thinker, with a direct 
and simple style, but he lacked the emotional and persuasive 
qualities of Webster and Clay. Clay was a chief advocate 
of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the author of the 
compromise measures of 1850. He has been called " the 
great pacificator/ ' He had great rhetorical powers and a 
very magnetic personality. He could sway crowds by his 
eloquence quite as effectively as Webster, but he did not have 
equal depth and power of thought. Consequently his 
speeches have not taken so high a rank as literature. The 
speeches of Clay and Calhoun on the Compromise Measures 
of 1850 are characteristic of the two men. 

The Academic Orators. — Among the academic orators, 
Rufus Choate (1799-1859) and Edward Everett (1794- 
1865) are easily preeminent. Choate was a lawyer of 
marked ability and with a singular power over juries. He 
was also a favorite occasional orator. He was a man of 
scholarship and refinement and breadth of information. 
His vocabulary was discriminating and picturesque, his 
sentences elaborately periodic, sometimes reaching the 
length of four or five hundred words. His best known 
address is his eulogy on Daniel Webster. Everett was Pro- 
fessor of Greek at Harvard University, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, Minister to Great Britain, President of Harvard, 
Secretary of State, and United States senator. He was the 
most polished orator of his time, although not so fervid and 
forceful as Choate. His style is elaborate and highly figura- 
tive. The best known of his addresses is the Eulogy on 
Washington. It was delivered one hundred and fifty times 
in the interests of the Mount Vernon Association. 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



179 



The Antislavery Orators. — Charles Sumner (1811-1874) 
and Wendell Phillips (1811-1884) were the great champions 
of the abolition movement. Sumner did most of his work 
in Congress, where he was the leader of the antislavery 
cause for years. His style was sometimes vehemently 
passionate. The Crime against Kansas is full of bitter 
vituperation. The True Grandeur of Nations represents his 
more stately academic style, rich in scholarly allusions. Wen- 
dell Phillips was a popular agitator. He cultivated a more 
conversational type of oratory, varied in its rhetorical effect. 
He was a master of sarcasm and invective. Like all agita- 
tors, however, he was much given to exaggeration, so that 
his speeches are not always effective when read in cold type. 
His speech on Toussaint UOuverture is characteristic. 

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). — The modern style of 
conversational oratory is further represented by the ad- 
dresses of Abraham Lincoln. They lack the studied periods 
and elaborate climaxes of the academic school. Lincoln 
did not have the refinement of polite learning. He was a 
simple man of the people, self-taught yet well taught. His 
speaking was simple, sincere, direct, forceful. In the Lincoln- 
Douglas debates, the speeches of Lincoln show less grace 
and finish than those of Douglas, but they have stronger 
moral earnestness and make a more direct appeal. His 
later speeches have literary grace and charm without being 
in the least artificial. 

His Addresses. — His best known addresses are the two 
Inaugurals and The Gettysburg Address. All these are com- 
paratively short. The Inaugurals are altogether worthy of 
the occasion, — dignified, conciliatory, firm. A great crisis 
is treated with the frank simplicity of genius. It was not a 
time for the graces of rhetoric. " The costly ornaments 
and studied contrivances of speech shock and disgust men, 



180 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their 
children, and their country hang on the decision of the 
hour." The Gettysburg Address is a marvel for concentra- 
tion of thought and simplicity of expression. Edward 
Everett, who gave a long address on the same occasion, said 
in a letter to Lincoln next day, " I should be glad if I could 
flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the 
occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes." 

Other Orators of this period are Robert Young Hayne 
(1791-1839), William Henry Seward (1801-1872), and 
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887). Hayne's speech on 
The Sales of the Public Lands and Seward's on The Irre- 
pressible Conflict are especially noteworthy. 

(d) MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 

Transcendentalism. — The intellectual independence of 
America was largely brought about by the transcendental 
movement. The movement began in Europe, the outcome 
of the democratic movement in politics, the romantic move- 
ment in literature, and the idealistic movement in phi- 
losophy ; the theories of the French Revolution, the poetry 
of Wordsworth and Coleridge, the thinking of Coleridge 
and Carlyle. It was a protest against conventional and 
formal thinking. It emphasized the intuitions ; it exalted 
spiritual truth. The individual soul was of supreme im- 
portance. Nature was the symbol or garment of a spiritual 
force behind and within. In America the movement took 
the form of a reaction against the rigid dogmatism and 
moral severity of the Puritans and the dry rationalism of 
Unitarian thought. It meant spiritual joy and intellectual 
freedom, the spontaneous development of the individual 
life. The leading spirits were Theodore Parker (1810-1860), 




Ralph Waldo Emerson. 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



181 



Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Amos Bronson Alcott 
(1799-1888), George Ripley (1802-1880), Margaret Fuller 
(1810-1850), and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). They 
were idealists and reformers. They founded a Transcen- 
dental Club and published a magazine, The Dial, which 
became the organ of the movement. As an experiment of 
practical reform, some of them under the leadership of 
George Ripley organized the socialistic community of 
Brook Farm at West Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Dial 
was short-lived and the Brook Farm experiment unsuccess- 
ful, but the movement as a whole was of lasting influence. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was the central 
figure of the group. - His influence on American thought 
and letters was very great. His Phi Beta Kappa address 
on The American Scholar, delivered at Harvard College in 
1837, has been called " our intellectual declaration of 
independence." He urged the new scholar to go for in- 
spiration to nature and life rather than to books, to be 
free, brave, self -trustful, " to read God directly/' to believe 
in his own intuitions of truth, planting himself " indomitably 
on his instincts/' revering his own individuality as " inspired 
by the Divine Soul, which also inspires all men." It was a 
call to a new and original intellectual life. And Emerson 
led the way. Already he had vowed, " Henceforth I design 
not to utter any speech, poem, or book that is not entirely 
and peculiarly my work." Just a year before (1836) he 
had published his little book Nature, a declaration of ideal- 
istic faith. His first volume of Essays appeared in 1841, 
containing the essays on History, Self -Reliance, Compensa- 
tion, Heroism, The Over-Soul. The second series, containing 
Character, Manners, Politics, etc., followed in 1844. Then 
came Poems (1847), Representative Men (1850), English Traits * 
(1856), The Conduct of Life (1860), Society and Solitude 



182 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



(1870). Meanwhile he was spreading his ideas by means of 
lectures, inaugurating the Lyceum lecture system, which 
later became universally popular and influential through 
such eminent orators as Everett, Phillips, and Curtis. 

His Style. — His lectures and essays are not easy to read 
because they are not so much the result of coherent thinking 
as the disconnected intuitions of a seer. It has been said 
that " his essays can be read backward as well as forward." 
There is nothing inevitable in the sequence of the sentences 
and paragraphs. Individual sentences, however, are marvels 
of thought and construction, short, finished, epigrammatical, 
unforgettable. Emerson is the most quotable writer in 
American literature, not excepting Franklin. 

"Books are for the scholar's idle times." 
"All men are at last of a size/' 

"The eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead." 
"Man hopes : genius creates." 

"Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool." 
"Let a man know his worth and keep things under his feet." 
"Beware when God lets loose a thinker on this planet." Then 
all things are at risk." 

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." 

Emerson furnished his age with an intellectual and moral 
tonic. 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862). — The only other 
member of the transcendental group who has won an en- 
during place in literature was Henry David Thoreau. He 
hardly belonged to the inner circle of transcendentalists ; 
but he was a close friend of Emerson, a man, indeed, after 
Emerson's own heart, living sturdily the doctrine of in- 
dividualism, going his self-appointed way with serene in- 
dependence. His nature was distinctly unsocial. He built 
a rude hut in the woods near Walden Pond and lived there 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



183 



alone for two years. The woods meant to him freedom. 
Life there gave him the opportunity to observe and enjoy 
nature, and reflect upon the ways of men. " I went to the 
woods/' he says, " because I wished to live deliberately, to 
front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn 
what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover 
that I had not lived. " He did not ignore the problems of 
his time, but his view of society was pessimistic and, there- 
fore, not distinctly helpful. His real interest was in nature. 
" Blessed are they," he said, " who never read men's affairs, 
for they shall see nature, and, through her, God." His 
fame rests upon his descriptions of nature and his accounts 
of life in the open air. He looked at nature with the eyes of 
the poet rather than of the scientist, delighting in her variety 
and mystery. He was a poet-naturalist. Walden, a record 
of his first year at Walden Pond, is his principal work, the 
only one published in his lifetime except A Week on the 
Concord and Merrimac Rivers. He left a mass of manu- 
script, however, in the form of a journal ; and five books 
were made from it and published shortly after his death, 
Excursions , The Maine Woods, Cape Cod, Letters, and A 
Yankee in Canada. Others were added later. The fame 
of Thoreau has been growing steadily. 

Historians. — Among the miscellaneous prose writers of 
this period four historians may fairly be said to have found a 
place in literature. Histories are not usually classed as 
literature, but occasionally an historian arises who has not 
only a mastery of facts but also the power of arranging and 
interpreting those facts with definite artistic purpose. 
Such were George Bancroft, W. H. Prescott, J. L. Motley, 
and Francis P&rkman. 

George Bancroft (1800-1891) was the least literary of the 
four; his History of the United States is not easy reading. 



184 



A M ERIC AN LI TERA T URE 



However, the exhaustive method and the accuracy of detail 
have given it a well-earned preeminence. There are ten 
volumes in all, representing an enormous amount of re- 
search. Indeed, the greater part of fifty years was spent 
in the preparation, though only the Colonial and Revolu- 
tionary periods are treated. The work is not accepted as 
final authority because of its over-patriotic and partisan 
bias. It lacks also the charm of literary style. 

William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859) was less exhaustive 
in research than Bancroft, for he was so nearly blind that he 
was unable to read for himself ; but he was a far greater 
literary artist. Taking for his subject the Spanish conquest 
in America, a picturesque and adventurous theme, he brooded 
over the facts which his secretaries gathered for him until 
the whole series of events appeared before his mind as in 
one brilliant romantic pageant. His great works are Ferdi- 
nand and, Isabella (1837), The Conquest of Mexico (1843), 
and The Conquest of Peru (1847). The public read them 
like romances, which indeed they are. " He filled his 
wide canvas with splendid masses of figures, scenes of court 
and camp and tropical forest, battlefields and strange bar- 
baric pomp." There was at the same time both unity of 
design and beauty of detail. 

John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877) was both a scholar arid 
a literary artist . He selected as his field of study one of the 
most dramatic periods of European history, the period from 
the abdication of Charles V of Spain (1555) to the peace of 
Westphalia (1648). Holland was the center of the, drama. 
The unifying theme was to be " The Eighty Years' War for 
Liberty." The purpose was to trace the heroic struggle of 
Holland against the tyranny of Spain, tell the story of the 
United Netherlands, and reduce to something like order the 
chaos of events known as the Thirty Years' War, The first 



FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD 



185 



installment was The Rise of the Dutch Republic, in three 
volumes, published in 1856. This brilliant historical record 
is as accurate as patient scholarship coul I make it and as 
interesting as a romance. Between 1860 arid 1868 appeared 
The History of the United Netherlands in four volumes, a 
subject of vast scope, dealing with the world-wide conflicts 
of the late sixteenth century, a great panorama of European 
history in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The general plan 
was to have been concluded by a history of the Thirty 
Years' War, but Motley did not live to complete the work. 

His Method. — Motley was not a dispassionate historian, 
but a sympathetic and ardent defender of the Dutch. Wil- 
liam of Orange was the hero of the story. The villain was 
Philip II of Spain. Motley was not unfaithful to the facts, 
but he used the facts to plead the cause of freedom of thought 
and speech and worship. He was not a modern scientific 
historian, but rather a faithful and graphic " describer of 
mighty heroic deeds." One " finishes the reading with 
a more vivid realization of the fearful part which war has 
played in the sad but stirring drama of human history.' ' 

Francis Parkman (1823-1893) was the historian of the 
American Wilderness. His first book, The California and 
Oregon Trail (1849), is an account of a journey through the 
then unknown Northwest. It recreates for us the pioneer 
life of the west. We are fortunate, indeed, in having so 
accurate and so vivid an account of the heroic conquest of 
the wilderness. Parkman's great historical theme, however, 
was the struggle of England and France for the control of 
the New World, the struggle which ended with the capture 
of Quebec (1759). This theme engaged the attention of 
Parkman for over forty years. The result was a series of 
eight volumes, the most important of which are La Salle; 
or The Discovery of the Great West (1869), an absorbing story 



186 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



of exploration and adventure, and Montcalm and Wolfe 
(1884), a well-planned and artistically written account of 
the final struggle for the control of the continent, ending 
with the victory of the English at Quebec, Parkman's 
work shows thorough scholarship. He was indefatigable in 
the search of historical sources and conscientiously accurate 
in the use of facts. He visited all the scenes described in 
his books. Moreover, he had the eye of an artist and the 
genius of the story-teller, so that he was able to make truth 
seem more romantic than fiction without losing anything of 
the reality of truth. 

Suggestions for Reading 1 

Bryant : Thanatopsis, Sella, and other Poems. 
Cooper : The Last of the Mohicans, The Spy. 
Edwards : Sermons. 
Emerson : Essays, Representative Man. 
Franklin : Autobiography . 

Hawthorne : The House of the Seven Gables, Mosses from an Old 
Manse. 

Holmes : Poems, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. 
Irving : Alhambra, Sketch Book. 
Lincoln : Addresses. 

Longfellow : The Courtship of Miles Standish, Evangeline, The 
Song of Hiawatha. 

Lowell : The Vision of Sir Launfal. 
Parkman : The Oregon Trail. 
Poe : Poems, Prose Tales. 
Washington : Farewell Address. 
Webster : Bunker Hill Orations. 
Woolman : Journal. 

1 All these readings may be found in the Pocket Series of English Classics 
published by The Macmillan Company. 



CHAPTER X 



THE SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 

The Period. — There is no distinct break between the 
period before and the period after the Civil War. This is 
particularly true of poetry, for the same great poets, Long- 
fellow and Lowell and Whittier, continued to sing as before. 
Still the intellectual and humanitarian interests which had 
centered in the interpretation of the constitution and the 
abolition of slavery were turned into new channels. New 
writers gradually came into prominence and new phrases of 
literary interest were developed. The poetic impulse was 
no longer confined to New England and the Middle Atlantic 
States. Oratory ceased to be academic and became more 
conversational and direct. In fiction, the emphasis shifted 
from the idealistic romance of Hawthorne and Poe to the realis- 
tic novel of Ho wells and Henry James. Above all, a new 
art form, the short-story, fostered by the monthly magazines, 
threatened to monopolize the popular literary interests. 

(a) POETRY 

Walt Whitman (1819-1892). — While Longfellow and 
Lowell and Whittier were at the height of their activity, a 
new group of poets was coming into prominence in New York. 
Of these, Walt Whitman was the most distinguished. He was 
born in the same year as Lowell, but did not become known 
as a poet until after the Civil War. His Leaves of Grass, 

187 



188 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



first published in 1855, did not reach its complete form for 
ten or fifteen years. In its final form, this is Whitman's 
most characteristic work. Its purpose, said the author, 
" is to present a complete picture of man in this age." It 
certainly treats a vast variety of subjects : indeed the chaos of 
democracy is in it. Its most striking characteristic is the 
style, very free and unconventional verse hardly to be dis~ 
tinguished in places from highly- wrought prose. This 
book, however, has only a few devoted admirers. Most 
people enjoy more the Drum Taps, and everybody appre- 
ciates When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed and 
Captain! my Captain! 

Taylor and Stoddard. — James Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) 
and Richard Henry Stoddard (1825-1903) should be thought 
of together, for they were lifelong friends and each was the 
poetic complement of the other. Each wrote one long 
narrative poem : Taylor, Lars, A Pastoral of Norway; 
Stoddard, The King's Bell. Both, however, were primarily 
lyric poets. Taylor was a great traveler and many of his 
lyrics interpret the spirit of foreign lands. His best volume 
is perhaps Poems of the Orient. Stoddard's lyrics are more 
purely emotional and often more deeply imaginative. Taylor 
himself characterizes them both in the following lines ad- 
dressed to Stoddard : 

"You strain your ears to catch the harmonies 

That in some finer regions have their birth ; 
I turn, despairing, from pursuit of these, 

And seek to learn the native tongue of Earth. 
In Fancy's tropic clime your castle stands, 

A shining miracle of rarest art ; 
I pitch my tent upon the naked sands, 
And the tall palm, that plumes the orient lands, 

Can with its beauty satisfy my heart." 



SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 



189 



Edmund Clarence Stedman (1833-1908) was for many 
years a central figure in the New York literary circle. Like 
Taylor and Stoddard, he was a lyric poet. His knowledge 
of literature was broad ; his taste, fastidious. His verse is 
unusually graceful and polished. He wrote ballads and 
lyrics, idyls of New England life not unlike those of Lowell 
and Whittier, and especially poems of city life. He has been 
called " the laureate of New York City." Peter StuyvesanV s 
New Year's Call, Fuit Ilium, and Pan in Wall Street illus- 
trate his lyrics of the town. The Undiscovered Country 
and The Discoverer represent his more serious poems. Haw- 
thorne, his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa poem, is thought by 
some to be his loftiest and best sustained production. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) also belongs to this 
group of lyric poets, although the latter part of his life was 
spent in Boston rather than in New York City. His fame 
began with the publication of The Ballad of Babie Bell in 
1856, and from that time on his literary advance was rapid 
and sure. Aldrich is not one of our major poets, but his 
verse is highly finished and often exquisitely beautiful. His 
lyrics of sentiment and fancy and his clever " society verse " 
are the best known. Cloth of Gold (1874) and Flower and 
Thorn (1876) contain much of his best poetry, 

Poets of the South. — The South at this period is repre- 
sented in poetry by Paul H. Hayne (1830-1886), Henry 
Timrod (1829-1867), and Sidney Lanier (1842-1881). At 
the outbreak of the Civil War, Hayne and Timrod were just 
coming into public notice. Hayne's first volume appeared 
in 1855 ; Timrod's, in 1860. The war, however, in which 
both of them served, sadly interfered with poetic activity, 
and the suffering and poverty incident to the great struggle 
undermined the health and shortened the career of each. 
Lanier was more fortunate in the struggle for fame. He is 



190 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



considered the foremost Southern poet since Poe. He, too, 
fought in the war and afterward had a long struggle with 
poverty and disease, but he succeeded in turning his tragedy 
into triumph. A volume of his poetry was published in 
1876. The complete edition appeared in 1884. He believed 
in the high mission of art and protested against the commer- 
cialism and materialism of his time. His poetry, though 
often didactic, is highly imaginative, melodious, refined, 
the poetry of beauty and music. Examples of his best work 
are Corn, The Ballad of the Trees and the Master, The Marshes 
of Glynn, The Song of the Chattahoochee, Evening Song, 
Hymns of the Marshes. 

Poets of the Far West. — But poetry was no longer con- 
fined to the East and South. California has produced at 
least three poets of significance, Francis Bret Harte (1839- 
1902), Joaquin Miller (1841-1912), and Edward Rowland 
Sill (1841-1887). Bret Harte was primarily a writer of prose 
sketches, but such poems as Plain Language from Truthful 
James, Jim, John Burns of Gettysburg, The Heathen Chinee, 
and Dickens in Camp are deservedly popular. Miller was 
preeminently the poet of the adventurous life of the frontier. 
His principal books are Songs of the Sierras (1870) and Songs 
of the Sunland (1873). His poems have some imaginative 
splendor, but the workmanship is careless. Sill was a man 
of refined culture, for some years Professor of English Litera- 
ture in the University of California. Three small volumes 
of poems bear his name. 

Poetry of the Middle West. — The Middle West claims 
Eugene Field (1850-1895), James Whitcomb Riley (1853- 
19—), and William Vaughn Moody (1869-1910). Field won 
some reputation by his Little Book of Western Verse and by 
some very fine translations and paraphrases of Horace ; and 
Riley has made a success of dialect poems of humble life. 



SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 



191 



These poems, however, do not constitute their most distinc- 
tive work. Both men are preeminently our poets of child 
life. Field's With Trumpet and Drum and Riley's Rhymes 
of Childhood are justly famous. Field's Little Boy Blue is 
undoubtedly a classic. Moody, though less popular, was a 
poet of much larger imaginative vision. Many consider him 
a poet of the very first rank. Such lyrics as Gloucester 
Moors and Song-Flower and Poppy are especially rich in 
imagery and melody. The Brute is a vision of what will 
evolve out of our sordid industrial system. The dramatic 
triology, The Fire-Bringer, The Masque of Judgment, and 
The Death of Eve (the last unfinished), represents the fullest 
expression of his vision of the meaning and worth of life. 

Other Poets. — Hardly less popular than the poets al- 
ready mentioned are Richard Watson Gilder (1844- ), 
George Edmund Woodberry (1855- ), Edwin Markham 
(1852- ), Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), Bliss 
Carman (1861- ), and many more. These are mere illus- 
trations taken almost at random. Among successful women 
poets may be mentioned Lucy Larcom (1826-1893), Helen 
Hunt Jackson (1831-1885), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), 
and Edith M. Thomas (1854- ). 

(b) FICTION 

General Characteristics. — In prose fiction the period 
since the Civil War has been especially rich. Indeed, stories 
of almost every kind have been innumerable, the long story 
and the short story, the romance of adventure, the novel 
with a purpose, the novel of real life. Story-telling before 
the war had been largely confined to romances like those of 
Cooper and Hawthorne and Poe. There had been no par- 
ticular effort to give a faithful picture of the common ex- 



192 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



periences of common men. For the most part the characters 
were unusual and their experiences extraordinary. The aim 
was not so much to interpret life as to tell an interesting story. 
The tendency since the war has been decidedly in the direc- 
tion of realism. Romances of mystery and adventure have 
not been entirely unknown ; but for the most part the interest 
of plot with its elements of surprise and terror has been sub- 
ordinated to the development of character in the midst of 
the actual problems of everyday life. The romance has 
been less prominent than the novel. 

The Beginnings of Realism. — The beginning of this 
tendency is noticeable in the prose writings of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes. Holmes won his reputation as a poet before the 
Civil War, but most of his prose belongs to the later period. 
He was very near to the common life of his generation, being 
a lover of men and a social favorite, a prominent member 
of the famous Saturday Club, a brilliant and witty talker. 
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, The Professor at the 
Breakfast Table, The Poet at the Breakfast Table, and Over 
the Tea-Cups are books of clever conversation on a great 
variety of subjects always treated with individuality and 
vitalized with charming touches of humor and pathos. 
Strictly speaking, these books are neither romances nor 
novels, but they show a clear tendency away from the in- 
terest in stories of adventure. His novels proper, Elsie 
Venner (1861), The Guardian Angel (1867), A Mortal Antip- 
athy (1885), though they contain much of mystery bordering 
on the supernatural, lay the emphasis on character study 
and particularly on the scientific problems of heredity, which 
had come to interest Holmes in the course of his profession of 
medicine. Indeed, these novels have been called " medicated 
novels " to indicate their scientific as opposed to romantic 
tendencies. - The Guardian Angel is perhaps the best. 



SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 



193 



Further Realistic Tendencies. — Realistic tendencies ap- 
pear further in such stories as Two Years before the Mast by 
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., and The Man without a Country 
by Edward Everett Hale. Two Years before the Mast is a 
story of personal adventure told in a thoroughly realistic 
manner. The Man without a Country was commonly thought 
for a long time to be actual history. The most typical 
realists, however, are William Dean Howells and Henry 
James, Jr. 

William Dean Howells (1837- ) has been an avowed 
realist. The theory of his art is explained in his volume 
Criticism and Fiction. He has wished his work to be " true 
to the methods, the influences, the principles that shape 
the lives of actual men and women/ 7 He would give us as 
nearly as possible a photograph of life, a reproduction of 
what he actually observes without much selection or rejec- 
tion. Avoiding extraordinary characters and unusual events, 
he studies common men under ordinary circumstances, por- 
traying the minutest incidents of their lives with painstaking 
exactness. He neither exalts their virtues nor emphasizes 
their vices. His books are full of commonplace, even trivial, 
experiences, neither rising to the heroic or sublime nor sinking 
to the coarse, the criminal, and the revolting. The interest 
lies not in the novelty of the incidents nor in the rush of the 
plot, but in the accuracy of detail, the skillful elaboration of 
incident, the charm of humor, the refinement of style. 

His Works. — Mr. Howells' literary work is extensive 
and varied. He has written some poetry (Poems 1860, 
Stops of Various Quills 1895) ; many notable volumes of 
travel, biography, and criticism (Venetian Life 1866, Ital- 
ian Journeys 1867, Criticism and Fiction, My Literary 
Friends and Acquaintances 1900), a few light comedies and 
farces (The Mousetrap, The Parlor Car, etc.). His most 
o 



194 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



important work, however, is the long list of realistic novels. 
Among the most popular are, A Foregone Conclusion (1874), 
The Lady of the Aroostook (1879), A Modern Instance (1882), 
The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), The Minister's Charge 
(1886), A Hazard of New Fortunes (1889), The World of 
Chance (1893), For the most part the characters of these 
stories are familiar and commonplace. The appearances of 
life are emphasized to the neglect of its deeper mysteries'. 
Only occasionally, as in the case of A Hazard of New For- 
tuneSj does the author seek varied and tragic types. 

Henry James (1843- ). — The public mind usually 
associates with Mr. Howells the name of Henry James, 
an American by birth who has lived most of his life since 
1869 in Europe. He is our most cosmopolitan writer. 
The name " international " is often applied to his novels. 
" He looks at America with the eyes of a foreigner and at 
Europe with the eyes of an American." The American 
(1877) has to do with a self-made man who expects his 
money to break down social barriers in Europe. The Euro- 
peans (1878) and An International Episode (1879) show 
Europeans as seen from the democratic standpoint of 
America. Prominent among his other novels are The 
Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), The 
Tragic Muse (1890), The Awkward Age (1899), and The 
Wings of the Dove (1902). Mr. James has been a very prolific 
writer. His published volumes number close to fifty. 

His Style. — The reader who demands in a novel a well- 
defined plot, a striking hero, and a rush of incident will not 
be satisfied with the novels of Mr. James. None of these 
elements of story-telling is prominent. Emphasis is placed 
upon careful analysis and accurate description. Actions 
and manners are depicted with what seems trivial minuteness. 
The story lags and dramatic effects are rare. The interest 



SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 



195 



lies largely in literary finesse, a polished, witty, brilliant style. 
Those who love elegance and accuracy and beauty of detail 
are fascinated, but most people find the style overwrought 
and the thought oversubtle. 

Novels of Locality. — Many novels are interesting largely 
for their local color and for careful delineation of provincial 
types. New England has been depicted by Elizabeth Stuart 
Phelps Ward (1844- ), Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman 
(1862- ), Sarah Orne Jewett (1849- ), and John 
Townsend Trowbridge (1827- ) . Indiana of pioneer days 
is pictured by Edward Eggleston (1837-1902), whose Hoosier 
Schoolmaster (1871) is especially earnest and strong. Louisi- 
ana appears in the stories of George W. Cable (1844- ), 
whose best books are usually thought to be Grandissimes, 
Madam Delphine, and Dr. Sevier. Tennessee is represented 
by Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree) (1850- ), 
whose most popular book has been The Prophet of the Great 
Smoky Mountains (1885). The plantation negro with his 
odd dialect and grotesque superstition has been exploited 
in the stories of Thomas Nelson Page (1853- ) and Joel 
Chandler Harris (1848-1908). The blue-grass region of 
Kentucky is interpreted by James Lane Allen (1848- ) in 
A Kentucky Cardinal and The Choir Invisible. These are 
only a few of the most important novels of locality. The 
list might be greatly increased. 

Romances. — Although the prevailing tendency has been 
realistic, romance has also flourished to a degree. Some of 
the stories of locality mentioned above, notably the stories 
of James Lane Allen, have a decided romantic coloring. One 
of the most popular of the romanticists has been Edward 
Payson Roe (1838-1888) . His books have been more popular 
than they really deserve, for they are almost without excep- 
tion sentimental and conventional. Examples are Barriers 



196 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Burned Away, The Opening of a Chestnut Burr, and Near 
to Nature's Heart. Much of the work of Francis Marion 
Crawford (1854-1909) is frankly romantic, not in the weird 
and mysterious manner of Hawthorne and Poe, but in the 
sense that they are written primarily for entertainment. 
Crawford believed a story should be " an intellectual artistic 
luxury," not " an intellectual moral lesson. " His best 
known stories are Saracinesca, Sanf Ilario, Don Orsino, and 
Corleone. Frank R. Stockton (1834-1902) used the methods 
of romance for humorous ends. His stories are whimsical 
and fantastic. The longer ones, however, Rudder Grange, 
The Late Mrs, Null, and The Hundredth Man, are not so 
interesting as the short stories. The Lady or the Tiger has 
been almost universally read. F. Hopkinson Smith's 
Colonel Carter of Carter sville is a humorous story of almost 
equal popularity. 

Humorists. — The more distinctly humorous writers are 
Charles Farrer Browne (Artemus Ward) (1834-1867), 
Bill Nye (1850-1896), Robert J. Burdette (1844- ), 
Henry W. Shaw (Josh Billings) (1818-1885), David Ross 
Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby) (1833-1888), and above all 
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835-1910). Of these 
Mark Twain is the most noteworthy. He alone has a dis- 
tinctly literary reputation. He is great not merely because 
his humor is spontaneous and irresistible. His deep insight 
into life and his power to create original characters are what 
place his work high. His Mississippi stories, The Adventures 
of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883), and 
Huckleberry Finn (1884), in spite of obvious impossibilities^ 
are chapters out of the heart of a life which " Mark Twain " 
knew from most intimate experience. Tom Sawyer and 
Huckleberry Finn are genuine incarnations of Young America. 
Innocents Abroad (1869) ridicules the sham enthusiasm and 



SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 



197 



easy gullibility of the ordinary tourist. These books are 
not always well constructed ; the humor is often rough, 
even coarse ; but there are few dull pages. Mark Twain 
is really a prince of entertainers. 

The Historical Romance. — Of late years, the historical 
romance has had an enormous popularity. Lew Wallace's 
Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell's Hugh 
Wynne, Paul Leicester Ford's Janice Meredith, and Winston 
Churchill's The Crisis have all run into many editions ; and 
the list could be increased by many more almost as popular. 

(c) ORATORY AND MISCELLANEOUS PROSE 

The Orators. — Since the Civil War the style of public 
speaking has greatly changed. The orations of Webster, 
Everett, and Choate were elaborate, stately, rhetorical. 
Modern oratory is plain, direct, conversational. Wendell 
Phillips represents the transition. Abraham Lincoln and 
George William Curtis belong distinctly to the modern 
school. Phillips' Phi Beta Kappa oration at Harvard in 1881 
on The Scholar in a Republic and Curtis's reply entitled 
The Leadership of Educated Men should be read together 
as typical examples of modern oratory. Pulpit oratory is 
well represented by Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) and 
Phillips Brooks (1835-1893). Henry W. Grady (1851-1889), 
the orator of the New South, won a wide reputation as a 
brilliant and fascinating speaker. Charles W. Eliot is re- 
markable for his pure and lucid style. Not much of present- 
day oratory, however, is usually classed among the master- 
pieces of literature. 

The Essayists. — The essay writing of the modern period 
is largely the product of the widespread vocation of journalism. 
It is hard to say how much of it should be classed as literature. 



198 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



A few names only can be mentioned here and those as 
merely illustrative. James Russell Lowell's essays stand 
first in time and perhaps also in significance. His poetry 
belongs to the earlier period, but the prose is for the most part 
more recent. The important volumes are Among my Books 
(1870, 1876), My Study Windows (1871), Political Essays 
(1888), Latest Literary Essays and Addresses (1891), and 
The Old English Dramatists (1892). Most of these essays 
are on literary subjects. They are ver}^ charming, humorous, 
and suggestive, the product of a richly cultured mind. 
With Lowell should be mentioned Edmund C. Stedman 
(1833-1908), whose Victorian Poets, The Poets of America, 
and The Nature and Elements of Poetry are universally 
considered significant books. Charles Dudley Warner's My 
Summer in a Garden (1870) and Back-log Studies (1872) 
show charming humor and a graceful finished style. Lovers 
of sentiment have been delighted with Donald G. Mitchell's 
Reveries of a Bachelor and Dream Life. The new interest 
in nature and in the out-door life has found its high priest 
in John Burroughs (1837- ). Something of his work is 
indicated by the titles of his books, Wake-Robin (1871), 
Winter Sunshine (1875), Birds and Poets (1877), Locusts and 
Wild Honey (1879), Fresh Fields (1884). Other writers about 
nature are Maurice Thompson and Ernest Thompson Seton. 

The Historians. — Recent historians have not been so re- 
markable for literary qualities as for accuracy of scholar- 
ship, industry in collecting material, diligence in preparing 
bibliographies, and care in indicating the sources of material. 
Some of the most important writers have been Goldwin 
Smith, Justin Winsor, Andrew D. White, John Fiske, Wood- 
row Wilson. None of these, except possibly John Fiske, has 
made genuine literature out of his history. Fiske's principal 
histories are The Critical Period of American History (1888), 




Nathaniel Hawthorne. 



SECOND CREATIVE PERIOD 



199 



The Beginnings of New England (1889), The American 
Revolution. (1891), The Discovery of America (1892), and 
Old Virginia and her Neighbors (1897). These books show 
accuracy and breadth of view, and are written in a lucid and 
brilliant style. Even Fiske's histories are not so widely 
read as his philosophical essays, Darwinism (1879), The 
Destiny of Man (1884), American Political Ideas (1885), and 
The Idea of God (1885). The tendency of to-day is to make 
history scientific at the expense of literary qualities. 

Suggested Readings 

Aldrich : Cloth of Gold, Flower and Thorn. 
Allen : The Choir Invisible. 

Craddock, Charles Egbert : The Prophet of the Great Smoky 
Mountains. 

Dana : Two Years before the Mast. 
Eggleston : The Hoosier Schoolmaster. 
Field : With Trumpet and Drum. 
Ho wells : A Hazard of New Fortunes. 
James : The American, The Europeans. 
Riley : Rhymes of Childhood. 

Twain, Mark : The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn. 
Smith, F. Hopkinson : Colonel Carter of Cartersville. 
Wallace : Ben Hur. 
Whitman : Drum Taps. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHORT-STORY 1 

Importance of the Short-Story. — The development of the 
short-story in America is important enough to deserve sepa- 
rate treatment. No other form of literary art has been more 
popular ; no other form owes so much of its artistic develop- 
ment to American writers. It has suited the temper of the 
busy American reader better than the long novel. It has 
easily adapted itself to the needs of the monthly magazine. 
Many of our important writers owe their reputations largely 
to their skill in short-story writing. The output has steadily 
increased until to-day this form of art threatens to monop- 
olize the literary market. 

Debt to the Periodical Essay. — The earliest important 
writer of short-stories in America was Washington Irving. 
He was a follower of Addison and began by writing short 
sketches and essays similar to those in The Spectator. Addi- 
son used the story to illustrate some moral and didactic 
exposition. A principle was set down and then exemplified 
by a story. The story was not told for its own sake. Irving 
differed from Addison in putting more emphasis on the story 
and less on the principle. He also differed in his romantic 
tendencies, cultivating emotional and atmospheric effects, 
which Addison neglected. He was almost the first to give 
artistic form in fiction to the mystery and superstition of 

1 For much in this chapter, the author is indebted to Canby's A Study of 
the Short-Story in English. 

200 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHORT-STORY 201 



the romanticists. To this he added humor and the charm of 
a graceful style. The Spectre Bridegroom illustrates his 
method. Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow 
show an admirable blending of humor and romance. 

The Work of Hawthorne. — Nathaniel Hawthorne con- 
tinued the development. Traces of the essay idea are to be 
found in his stories, but he merged the story and the moral*— 
Instead of telling the story to illustrate a moral which was 
stated in didactic form at the beginning or the end, he made 
the central interest of the story itself a moral situation. 
The Birthmark is a good example. The germinal idea of 
this story is thus expressed in Hawthorne's American Note- 
Books, in which he was in the habit of putting down sugges- 
tions for stories : "A person to be the death of his beloved 
in trying to raise her to more than mortal perfection ; yet 
this should be a comfort to him for having aimed so highly 
and holily." This moral situation is made to exemplify 
the futility of the search for human perfection. It is not, 
however, stated as a proposition to be illustrated, but is 
made the central emotional interest of the story. It gives 
unity and concentration to the story itself. Hawthorne did 
much for the development of the idea of a central situation. 
He embodied his moral theme in a concrete situation. Other 
examples besides The Birthmark are The Great Stone Face, 
The Snow Image, The Ambitious Guest, Rappaccini's Daugh- 
ter, The Gray Champion, and Ethan Brand. 

The Unity of Emotional Impression. — Edgar Allan Poe 
did much to further centralize and intensify the interest of 
the story. He made everything subordinate to the single r 
emotional impression which he wished to produce. He 
believed that every fact, every word, should be chosen 
for its effect on this single emotional impression. Every- 
thing should point directly toward the climax. In The 



202 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



Cask of Amontillado, for example, every event works toward 
the climax of revenge and helps to intensify the cold horror 
of that climax. Even the first sentence starts us toward 
the goal : " The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne 
as I best could : but wiien he ventured upon insult, I vowed 
revenge." Poe also developed the power of holding the 
reader in suspense until the climax. Indeed, his prevailing 
method is the method of suspense. The reader looks forward 
to the end with breathless anticipation. The Fall of the House 
of Usher well illustrates this concentration of emotion and 
tension of suspense. The gloomy mood with which the story 
opens is developed into a morbid nervous tension which 
breaks suddenly, just as the old house bursts asunder and 
sinks into the tarn. Ligeiais also a masterpiece of concen- 
tration and tension. 

The Detective Story. — Poe also developed in his tales 
the kind of interest which belongs to the modern detective 
story. The detective as a character appears only twice, 
but the intellectual zest of following clues to their logical 
conclusions furnishes the central interest of many of the 
plots. In The Gold Bug, a cipher written on an old piece of 
parchment, is found to be the clue to a hidden treasure ; 
and the clue is followed until the treasure is discovered. 
The Murders in the Rue Morgue solves the problem of mys- 
terious murders. The interest of The Purloined Letter lies 
in a similarly close chain of reasoning. In emotional intensity 
and plot interest, the stories of Poe have rarefy been equalled. 
^Poe was the founder of the Short-Story as a conscious literary 
form. The events are often impossible and the mood fre- 
quently morbid, but the emotional tension and the climatic 
plot interest are always wrought out with great technical skill. 

Fitz- James O'Brien. — The traditions of short-story 
writing established by Poe were continued by Fitz-James 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHORT-STORY 



203 



O'Brien, a brilliant Irishman from Dublin University, who 
came to America to retrieve his broken fortunes and who died 
at the age of thirty-four of a wound received in a battle of 
the Civil War. His best short-story, What was It; a 
Mystery, is a tale of the mysterious and horrible quite in the 
manner of Poe. The characters are abnormal. All the in- 
terest centers in the single emotional impression of super- 
natural dread arising out of the struggle to overcome a 
mysterious being which has a definite form and w T hich 
breathes and struggles, but which is quite invisible. The 
story is well organized and made plausible by means of 
commonplace details. Other important stories by O'Brien 
are The Diamond Lens and The W onder smith. 

Hale's Man without a Country. — Edward Everett Hale 
wrote one great short-story, The Man without a Country. 
It is written more in the manner of Hawthorne than in the 
manner of Poe. The interest lies in a single situation, the 
terrible and pathetic condition of an army officer whose wish 
that he may never again see the flag of his country or hear 
his country's name, is granted. The plot is not remarkably 
well constructed, but the intense patriotism which is wrought 
into the central situation has made the story justly popular. 

The Work of Bret Harte. — The stories of Bret Harte are 
neither morbid like Poe's nor symbolic like Hawthorne's, 
yet he seems to have united to advantage the technical merits 
of both his great predecessors. He emphasized both the- 
central situation and the* single emotional impression. 
Two of his best stories are The Luck of Roaring Camp and 
The Outcasts of Poker Flat. The first of these has its central 
situation in the house warming held in honor of the first 
baby born in a rough California mining camp. The situation 
rises to an emotional climax when Kentuck lies dead with the 
baby still grasping his fingers. In The Outcasts of Poker Flat 



204 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



four disreputable characters, who have been driven from the 
town, are overtaken by a snowstorm on a mountain and 
thus brought face to face with death. As the climax ap- 
proaches, the inherent nobility of the characters comes to 
the surface. The emotional climax is reached when Piney 
and the Duchess die in each other's arms. Bret Harte also 
made much of " local color. " The California of early days 
is picturesquely presented ; not, perhaps, with absolute 
truthfulness, but with what has been called " romantic 
truth. " The essential spirit of the time and the place are 
in the stories. Bret Harte gives us the genuine romance of 
the frontier. His important stories in addition to those men- 
tioned are Tennessee's Partner, Higgles, and How Santa 
Claus Came to Simpson's Bar. 

Humorous Short-Stories. — The scope of the short-story 
was much broadened by the humorists, especially by Mark 
Twain, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and Frank R. Stockton. 
These writers developed, not tragical and emotional, but 
light and surprising situations. Mark Twain's The Jumping 
Frog of Calaveras County, in which the frog could not jump 
because of the shot in his belly, is a mere joke worked 
into a short-story. The point of Aldrich's Marjorie Daw is 
the surprising outcome of a love affair, in which the hero- 
ine turns out to be a purely fictitious character. Stock- 
ton's The Lady or the Tiger is a problem story which leaves 
the reader puzzled. The problem is so artfully stated that 
it can never be solved. Thus the tragedy is suddenly 
changed into comedy. This kind of story, based on light 
and surprising situations, has been much cultivated; but, 
for the most part, the work has not been finished and strong. 
H. C. Bunner's Short Sixes is a typical volume. 

Local Color. — Much of the interest in certain short-stories 
lies in the setting, in picturing the characteristic life of par- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHORT-STORY 205 



ticular districts. Nearly every part of the country has been 
thus exploited. Bret Harte set the example in treating life 
in California. George W. Cable's Old Creole Days is remark- 
able not so much for the story interest proper as for the de- 
scriptions of Louisiana characters and manners. In Miss 
Murfree's collection of stories called In the Tennessee Moun- 
tains, the story interest is subordinated to interest in the 
life of a belated and almost forgotten people. Hamlin Gar- 
land has dealt with the middle west in Main Traveled Roads. 
Life in Virginia is charmingly portrayed in Thomas Nelson 
Page's In Ole Virginia and in other collections of his short- 
stories. New England appears in the stories of Sarah Orne 
Jewett and Mrs. Wilkins-Freeman. Of these two New 
England writers Professor Canby says : 

"Miss Jewett was not content with the superficies of the local 
life she studies. In The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), and like 
stories, she tried to establish a true relationship between the rocky 
country she loved and its weathered inhabitants. Mrs. Wilkins- 
Freeman, whose pen is far more skillful, goes further. With her, 
the setting is interesting only for its effect upon the dwellers of her 
hill country. She deals with the subtle influence of a hard, unlovely 
life upon temperament ; she is a conscientious realist, who con- 
structs her little stories as carefully as Maupassant himself. . . . 
With her, the local-color story in English reaches its highest point 
of finesse ; but loses in vividness, and sometimes in force." 

The Vignette. — Professor Brander Matthews calls a 
volume of his local-color stories Vignettes of Manhattan. 
The name suggests a central situation thoroughly elaborated, 
the events which surround that situation shading off in 
interest in various directions. It calls attention to the 
method of constructing the stories. Spring in a Side Street is 
a typical example of the stories in this volume. A young 
man, just recovering from an illness, is sitting at the window 



206 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



of his room, a hall bedroom, watching what is going on in 
the street below. His reflections on the changing scene 
present the crisis of his life in high relief and treat with less 
intensity his past and his future. These stories show the 
tendency of local-color stories generally to emphasize the 
incidental element of setting at the expense of the more vital 
narrative element. 

The Analytical Short-Story. — In still other stories the 
plot interest is overshadowed by subtle psychological analy- 
sis. The great master of this form is Henry James, Jr. He 
is interested not so much in the external situation as in the 
hmer_experten£e. Subtle shading in character, fine discrimi- 
nation in analyzing motives, a painstaking view of character 
and situation from all possible angles — these are Mr. 
James's main concern. The Madonna of the Future presents 
a painter who believes a great madonna may yet be painted, 
but whose ideal of what she should be is always in advance of 
his powers of execution. His insight grows faster than his 
technical skill. Indeed, as old age approaches, the one in- 
creases while the other decays. His ideal flowers ; but his 
power to execute withers, and, in the end, the canvas remains 
bare. The Real Thing is a subtle portrayal of aristocratic 
manners, which have become a part of character. Major 
Monarch and his wife are still aristocratic, though they have 
been stripped of wealth and circumstance and are reduced 
to posing as painters' models. Mr. James's attitude toward 
his subject is peculiar. He does not enter into the pas- 
sions of life as Poe does, nor is he a moral analyst like 
Hawthorne. He is rather an intellectual analyst, interested 
simply in explaining the phenomena of life rationally. To 
him, the mind of man is an interesting machine, which he 
delights in taking apart, adjusting, and putting in motion 
again. His work represents the short-story in its most 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE SHORT-STORY 207 



elaborate development. Besides The Madonna of the Future 
and The Real Thing, his best known short stories are The 
Beldonald Holbein, The Liar, and Paste. 

Contemporary Stories. — The twentieth century has seen 
no abatement of the popularity of the short-story. No form 
of literature has a wider vogue to-day. Short-stories crowd 
the monthly magazines and the Sunday supplements and 
find their way even into the daily newspaper. The writers 
who have achieved popularity are numerous. Among the 
most popular are O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), Jack 
London, Edith Wharton, Octave Thanet, Owen Wister, 
Henry Van Dyke, and Gouverneur Morris. And these are 
only illustrative. No doubt there are many others almost 
if not quite as significant. A discriminating judgment 
should not yet be attempted. Suffice it to say that American 
writers continue to excel in this form of art. It may be true 
that the short-story of to-day is in danger from its very popu- 
larity. We are told that it is becoming journalistic rather 
than literary, vulgarized in subject-matter and in style; 
that the writing of short-stories has been reduced to a 
mere handicraft ; and that the drama is the rising art form. 
We cannot, however, be sure of present tendencies, and 
prophecy is always dangerous. 

Suggested Readings 
Aldrich : Marjorie Daw. 

Garland : The Return of a Private, Among the Corn Rows. 
Hale : The Man without a Country. 

Harte, Bret : The Outcasts of Poker Flat, The Luck of Roaring 
Camp, Tennessee [s Partner. 

Hawthorne : The Birthmark, Ethan Brand. 

Henry, 0. : The Hiding of Black Bill. 

Irving : Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy -Hollow. 



208 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



James, Henry, Jr. : The Real Thing, The Madonna of the Future, 
The Liar. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne : The King of Folly Island. 
London, Jack : To Build a Fire. 

O'Brien, Fitz-James : What Was It: a Mystery, The Diamond 
Lens. 

Page, Thomas Nelson : In Ole Virginia, Marse Chan. 
Poe : The Fall of the House of Usher, The Gold Bug, The Cask of 
Amontillado. 

Stockton : The Lady or the Tiger. 
Wharton, Edith : The Great Inclination. 
White, William Allen : The King of Boyville. 
Wilkins-Freeman : The New England Nun. 



INDEX 



Absalom and Achitophel, 77. 
Adam Bede, 123, 124. 
Adams and Jefferson, 177. 
Adams, Samuel, 162, 163. 
Addison, Joseph, 15, 76, 79, 81, 84, 

85, 91. 
Adonais, 105. 

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 167. 
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The, 196. 
Mneid, The, 29, 70. 
Alcott, Amos Bronson, 181. 
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 189, 204. 
Alexander's Feast, 77. 
Alfred the Great, 12. 
Alhambra, The, 166. 
Allen, James Lane, 195. 
All for Love, 75. 
Ambitious Guest, The, 168. 
American Flag, The, 170. 
American Note-Book, The (Haw- 
thorne's), 201. 
American Scholar, The, 164, 181. 
American, The, 194. 
Among my Books, 198. 
Anatomy of Melancholy, 66. 
Ancren Riwle, 25. 
Andrea del Sarto, 137. 
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 13, 17. 
Anglo-Saxon Literature, 1, 2, 3, 6-13. 
Apologia, Newman's, 126, 127. 
Areopagitica, 69. 
Aristotle, 45. 

Arnold, Matthew, 20, 127, 128, 129. 
Arthur, King, 6, 16, 17, 45. 
Arthur Mervyn, 165. 
Atalanta in Calydon, 141. 
Austen, Jane, 119. 

Autobiography, Franklin's, 156, 163. 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, The, 
192. 



Back-log Studies, 198. 

Bacon, Francis, 47. 

Ballad of Babie Bell, 189. 

Ballad, the, 21-25, 21, 23, 95, 102, 

106, 138. 
Bancroft, George, 183, 184. 
Barbara Frietchie, 174. 
Barlow, Joel, 161. 
Battle of Brunanburh, 5. 
Battle of Maldon, 5. 
Battle of the Books, 83. 
Bay Psalm Book, The, 159. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 59. 
Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 7, 12. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 180, 198. 
Belfry of Bruges, The, 172. 
Ben Hur, 197. 
Beowulf, 3, 6, 70. 
Biglow Papers, The, 173. 
Billings, Josh (Henry W. Shaw), 

196. 

Biographia Liter aria, 110. 
Birthmark, The, 201. 
Black Cat, The, 168. 
Blackwood's Magazine, 81, 111. 
Blair, Robert, The Grave, 94. 
Blithedale Romance, The, 169. 
Bostonians, The, 194. 
Boswell, James, 84. 
Br'acebridge Hall, 166. 
Bradford, William, 155. 
Bradstreet, Mrs. Anne, 160. 
Brahma, 171. 
Brook Farm, 169, 181. 
Brooks, Phillips, 197. 
Brown, Charles Brockden, 164, 165. 
Browne, Charles Farrer, 196. 
Browne, Sir Thomas, 66, 67. 
Browning, Robert, 115, 136, 137, 
138. 



209 



210 



INDEX 



Brut, Layamon's, 17. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 170-1. 
Building of the Ship, The, 172. 
Blinker Hill Oration, 177 '. 
Bunner, Henry Cuyler, 204. 
Bunyan, John, 67, 71. 
Burdette, Robert J., 196. 
Burke, Edmund, 80, 86, 91. 
Burns, Robert, 97, 161. 
Burroughs, John, 174, 198. 
Burton, Robert, 66. 
Butler, Samuel, 78, 161. 
Byron, 106, 107, 129. 

Cable, George W., 195, 205. 
Caedrnon, 7, 17. 
Calhoun, John C, 176. 
California and Oregon Trail, The, 
185. 

Canterbury Tales, The, 27, 30, 32. 

Cape Cod, 183. 

Captain! my Captain! 188. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 111, 115, 116, 117, 

119, 121, 127. 
Carman, Bliss, 191. 
Castle of Indolence, The, 94. 
Castle of Otranto, The, 95. 
Celts, The, 5. 

Chambered Nautilus, The, 175. 

Chatterton, Thomas, 96. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 15, 25-33, 27, 

28, 29, 45. 
Chevy Chace, 23, 81, 91, 95. 
Childe Harold, 106. 
Choate, Rufus, 178, 197. 
Choir Invisible, The, 195. 
Christabel, 102. 

Chronicle History plays, 50, 56. 

Churchill, Winston, 197. 

Clarissa Harlowe, 88. 

Clay, Henry, 177-8. 

Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain), 

179, 196, 204. 
Cleon, 137. 
Cloth of Gold, 189. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 101, 102, 
103, 106, 110, 111, 113, 117, 161, 
180. 

Colonel Carter of Carter smile, 196. 



Columbia, 160. 
Columbiad, The, 161. 
Comedy, 76. 
Common Sense, 163. 
Compleat Angler, The, 67. 
Comus, 60. 

Conciliation with America, 86. 
Conduct of Life, The, 181. 
Congreve, William, 74, 76. 
Conquest of Canaan, The, 160. 
Conquest of Granada, The, 75, 166. 
Conquest of Mexico, The, 184. 
Conquest of Peru, The, 184. 
Consolations of Philosophy, 13. 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 164, 166, 

167, 169, 191. 
Cotter's Saturday Night, The, 175. 
Courtin' , The, 173. 

Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 

172, 173. 
Cowley, Abraham, 66, 81. 
Cowper, William, 96, 99. 
Craddock, Charles Egbert (Miss 

Murfree), 195. 
Crashaw, Richard, 65. 
Crawford, Francis Marion, 196. 
Crime against Kansas, The, 179. 
Crisis, The (Churchill's), 197. 
Crisis, The (Paine's), 163. 
Criticism, 90-91. 
Criticism and Fiction, 193. 
Curtis, George William, 182, 197. 
Cynewulf, 11. 

Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., 193. 

Daniel Deronda, 124. 
Darwin, Charles, 115, 125. 
Davenant, 75. 
Day of Doom, The, 160. 
Days, 172. 

Death of Blanche the Duchesse, 28. 

Death of Eve, The, 191. 

Death of the Flowers, The, 171. 

Declaration of Independence, 163. 

Deerslayer, The, 167. 

Defoe, Daniel, 87, 165. 

De Quincey, Thomas, 112, 113. 

Descent into a Maelstrom, A, 167. 

Deserted Village, The, 80, 175. 



INDEX 



211 



Destiny of Man, The, 199. 
Dial, The, 181. 

Diary of Samuel Sewall, 155, 156. 
Dickens, Charles, 120, 190. 
Dickinson, Emily, 191. 
Doctor Faustus, 52. 
Dr. Sevier, 195. 
Donne, John, 64. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 179. 
Dover Beach, 129. 
Doyle, Dr. Conan, 167. 
Drake, Joseph Rodman, 170. 
Drama, 33-41, 50, 75-77. 
Dream Life, 198. 
Drum Taps, 188. 
Dryden, John, 75, 77, 90. 
Dunbar, Paul Laurence, 191. 
Dunciad, The, 79. 
Dwight, Timothy, 160-2. 

Earthly Paradise, The, 139. 
Ecclesiastical History of New England, 

The, 158. 
Edgar Huntley, 165. 
Edinburgh Review, The, 81, 111. 
Edward II, 53, 54. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 158, 160. 
Eggleston, Edward, 195. 
Elegy, Gray's, 94. 
Eliot, Charles W., 197. 
Elsie Venner, 192. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 164, 171-2, 
181, 182. 

English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 
108. 

English Mail Coach, The, 112. 
English Traits, 181. 
Epic, The, 70. 
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 79. 
Essay, The, 81-87. 
Essay of Dramatic Poetry, Dryden's, 
90. 

Essay on Criticism, 80, 90. 

Essay on Man, 80. 

Essays, Emerson's, 181. 

Essays of Elia, 112. 

Eternal Goodness, The, 174. 

Eulogy on Washington, Choate's, 178. 

Euphues, 44, 47. 



Eutaw Springs, 161. 
Evangeline, 172, 173. 
Everett, Edward, 178, 182, 197. 
Everyman, 37. 
Examiner, The, 82. 
Excursions, Thoreau's, 183. 

Fable for Critics, The, 173. 
Faerie Queene, The, 45. 
Faithful Shepherdess, The, 60. 
Fall of the House of Usher, The, 
168, 202. 

Farewell of a Virginia Slave Mother, 
174. 

Federalist Papers, The, 163. 
Ferdinand and Isabella, 184. 
Field, Eugene, 190, 191. 
Fielding, Henry, 88, 89, 109. 
Fire-Bringer, The, 191. 
Fiske, John, 198, 199. 
Flower and Thorn, 189. 
Ford, Paul Leicester, 197. 
Foregone Conclusion, A, 194. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 156, 157, 182. 
Freedom of the Will, The, 158. 
French Revolution, 96, 103, 104, 
107. 

Freneau, Philip, 161. 
Fringed Gentian, The, 171. 
Fuller, Margaret, 181. 

Gammer Gurton's Needle, 48. 
Garland, Hamlin, 205. 
Garrick, David, 79. 
Gawayne and the Green Knight, 18. 
Gentle Boy, The, 169. 
Gentleman's Magazine, The, 81. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 16. 
George Eliot, 115, 120, 122, 123. 
Gettysburg Address, The, 179-180. 
Gilder, Richard Watson, 191. 
Godwin, William, 97. 
Gold Bug, The, 167, 202. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 77, 79, 90. 
Gorboduc, 49, 50, 54, 58. 
Grady, Henry W., 197. 
Grandisimes, 195. 
Gray Champion, The, 169. 
Gray, Thomas, 94, 95. 



212 



IXDEX 



Great Carbuncle, The. 168. 
Great Stone Face, The, 168. 
Gregorv, Pope, 6, 13. 
Guardian Angel The, 192. 
Gulliver s Travels, S3, 88. 

Hale, Edward Everett, 193, 203. 
Halleck, Fitz-Green, 170. 
Hamilton, Alexander, 163. 
Hamlet, 55, 58, 60. 
Harris, Joel Chandler. 195. 
Harte, Francis Bret, 190, 203-4, 205. 
Hartford Wits, The, 160. 
Harvard Commemoration Ode, The, 
173. 

Hasty Pudding, 161. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 164, 168-9, 

187, 191, 196. 201, 203, 206. 
Hayne, Paul H., 189. 
Hayne. Robert Young. 176. ISO, 
Hazard of New Fortunes, A, 194. 
Hazlitt, William, 111. 
Henry V, 55. 
Henry Esmond, 122. 
Henry, O. (William Sidney Porter), 

207. 

Henry, Patrick, 162, 163. 
Herbert, George, 65. 
Heroes and Hero-Worship, 119. 
Herrick. Robert, 63. 
Hey wood, John, 39. 
Heywood, Thomas, 59. 
Hiawatha, 172, 173. 
History of Xeiv England, 155. 
History of the United Xetherlands, 1S5. 
History of the United States, Ban- 
croft's, 1S3. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 175, 192. 
Holy Grail The, 17. 
Holy Living and Holy Dying, 66. 
Home, Sweet Home, 170. 
Hoosier Schoolmaster, The, 195. 
Horace, 190. 
House of Fame, The, 28. 
House of Night, The, 161. 
House of Seven Gables, The, 169. 
Howells, William Dean, 187, 193-4. 
Huckleberry Finn, 196. 
Hudibras, 78, 161. 



Humanism, 41. 
Humbler-Bee, The, 172. 
Humphrey Clinker, 89. 

Ichabod, 174. 

Idea of God, The, 199. 

Idealism of Victorian Era, 125-142. 

Idler, The, 84. 

Idylls of the King, The, 17, 135. 

Iliad, The, 3, 70. 

II Penseroso, 68, 94. 

Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 86- 

Indian Burying Ground, The, 161. 

Indian Emperor, The, lb. 

Innocents Abroad, 196. 

In Memoriam, 133. 

In Ole Virginia, 205. 

Interludes. 39. 

International Episode, An, 194. 
In the Tennessee Mountains, 205. 
Intimations of Immortality, Ode on, 
100. 

Invention of Printing, The, 42. 
Irrepressible Conflict, The, 180. 
Irving, Washington, 165-6, 169, 200. 
Italian Journeys, 193. 
Ivanhoe, 14, 22. 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, 191. 

James, Henry, 187, 193, 194-5, 206. 
; Janice Meredith, 197. 

Jay. John, 163. 
, Jefferson, Thomas, 163, 178. 

Jeffrey, Francis, 111. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne, 195, 205. 

Jew of Malta, The, 52. 

Johnson, Samuel, 76, 80, 84, 85, 86, 
87. 

Jones, Inigo, 59. 

Jonson, Ben, 58, 59, 75. 

Journal of the Plague Year, 87, 165. 

Journal to Stella, 84. 

June, 171. 

1 Kalavala, 173. 

Keats, John, 10S, 113, 138. 

Kelmscott Press, 139. 
j Kentucky Cardinal, A, 193. 
j Key, Francis Scott, 170. 



INDEX 



213 



Kidnapped, 140. 
King's Bell, The, 188. 
Knickerbocker s History of New York, 
166. 

Knight's Tale, The, 32. 
Kubla Khan, 102. 

Lady of the Aroostook, The, 194. 
Lady of the Lake, The, 23. 
Lady or the Tiger, The, 196, 204. 
L' Allegro, 68. 

Lamb, Charles, 111, 113, 156. 

Langland, William, 26, 30. 

Lanier, Sidney, 189. 

Larcom, Lucy, 191. 

Lars, A Pastoral of Norway, 188. 

La Salle ; or the Discovery of the Great 

West, 185. 
Last of the Mohicans, The, 167. 
Last Leaf, The, 175. 
Laus Deo, 174. 
Layamon, Brut, 17, 117. 
Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 106. 
Leadership of Educated Men, The, 197. 
Lear, King, 56, 58, 60. 
Leaves of Grass, 187. 
Legend of Good Women, The, 28. 
Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The, 166, 

201. 
Lenore, 175. 

Letters on a Regicide Peace, 86. 
Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 95, 109, 
119. 

Life and Voyages of Columbus, The, 
166. 

Life of Oliver Goldsmith, The, 166. 
Life of Washington, The, 166. 
Ligeia, 168, 202. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 175, 179-80, 197. 
Literary Friends and Acquaintances, 

My, 193. 
Little Book of Western Verse, 190. 
Lives of the Poets, Johnson's, 85. 
Locke, David Ross, 196. 
London, Jack, 207. 
London Magazine, 81. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 158, 

172-3. 
Lost Occasion, The, 174. 



Love for Love, 76. 
Lovelace, Richard, 63. 
Lowell, James Russell, 173, 187, 189, 
198. 

Luck of Roaring Camp, The, 203. 

Luther, Martin, 43. 

Lycidas, 68. 

Lyly, John, 44, 57. 

Lyrical Ballads, The, 101, 161. 

Macaulay, Thomas B., 115, 116. 

Macbeth, 55, 58. 
McFingal, 161. 
MacFlecknoe, 77, 78. 
Madison, James, 163. 
Madonna of the Future, The, 206. 
Magnolia Christi, 158. 
Mahomet and his Successors, 166, 
Maine Woods, The, 183. 
Main Traveled Roads, 205. 
Maldon, The Battle of, 5. 
Malory, Sir Thomas, 17, 20. 
Manfred, 107. 

Man without a Country, The, 193, 
203. 

Marble Faun, The, 169. 

Marco Bozzaris, 170. 

Marjorie Daw, 204. 

Markham, Edwin, 191. 

Marlowe, Christopher, 52-54, 60. 

Marmion, 106. 

Masque of Judgment, The, 191. 
Mather, Cotton, 158. 
Maypole of Merry Mount, The, 169. 
Meredith, George, 124, 125. 
Merlin, 171. 

Metaphysical School of Poetry, 60. 

Middlemarch, 123. 

Middleton, Thomas, 60. 

Midsummer Night's Dream, 55, 57. 

Miller, Joaquin, 190. 

Mill on the Floss, The, 123, 124. 

Milton, John, 67, 68, 69, 74, 81, 93, 

94, 174. 
Ministers Charge, The, 194. 
Miracle Plays, 35. 
Mirror for Magistrates, 44. 
Mitchell, Donald G., 198. 
I Mitchell, Dr. S. Weir, 197. 



214 



INDEX 



Modern Instance, A, 194. 

Modern Painters, 130. 

Modest Proposal, A, 83. 

Monk, The, 95. 

Montcalm and Wolfe, 186. 

Moody, William Vaughn, 190, 191. 

Morality Plays, 37. 

Morris, Gouverneur, 207. 

Morris, William, 20, 138, 139. 

Mortal Antipathy, A, 192. 

Morte d' Arthur, 17, 20. 

Mosses from an Old Manse, 168. 

Motley, John Lothrop, 184-5. 

MS. Found in a Bottle, 167. 

Much Ado about Nothing, 56, 57. 

Murders in the Rue Morgue, The, 167. 

Murfree, Mary N. (Charles Egbert 

Craddock), 195, 205. 
Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 95, 164. 
Mystery of Marie Roget, The, 167. 
Mystery Plays, 35. 

Xasby, Petroleum V. (David Ross 

Locke), 196. 
Natty Bumpo, 167. 
Nature, 181. 

Nature in Eighteenth Century Liter- 
ature, 96. 
Newcomes, The, 122. 
Newman, John Henry, 126. 
Night Thoughts, 94. 
Norman Baron, The, 172. 
Northern Antiquities, 95. 
Novel, The, 87-90. 
Nun's Priest's Tale, The, 32. 
Nye, Bill, 196. 

O'Brien, Fitz-James, 202-3. 
Observations on the Faerie Queene, 
91, 94. 

Ode, The, 100, 101, 102, 103, 108. 

Old Creole Days, 205. 

Old English Baron, The, 95. 

Old English Dramatists, The, 198. 

Old Ironsides, 175. 

Old Oaken Bucket, The, 170. 

Origin of Species, The, 125. 

Orphan, The, 76. 

Ossian, 96. 



Other Twice-Told Tales, 168. 
Otis, James, 162, 163. 
Otway, Thomas, 76. 
Over the Tea-Cups, 192. 
Oxford Movement, The, 125. 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 195, 205. 

Paine, Thomas, 163. 

Palace of Pleasure, Painter's, 44. 

Pamela, 88. 

Paradise Lost, 69, 94. 

Parker, Theodore, 180. 

Parkman, Francis, 185. 

Partridge Predictions, The, 82. 

Pathfinder, The, 167. 

Pater, Walter, 139, 141. 

Payne, John Howard, 170. 

Pearl, The, 25. 

Percy, Bishop, 95. 

Petrarch, 43. 

Phantom Ship, The, 158. 

Phillips, Wendell, 179, 182, 197. 

Picaresque stories, 87. 

Piers Plowman, 26. 

Pilgrims, 153. 

Pilgrim's Progress, 71. 

Pilot, The, 167. 

Pioneers, The, 167. 

Planting of the Apple Tree, The, 171. 

Plautus, 39, 48. 

Plymouth Plantation, Of, 155. 

Pocahontas, 155. 

Poe, Edgar Allan, 161, 164, 167-8, 
175-6, 187, 190, 191, 196, 201-2, 

203, 206. 
Poems, Emerson's, 181. 
Poems of the Orient, 188. 
Poet at the Breakfast Table, The, 192. 
Poetry, Romantic, 93-109. 
Poor Richard's Almanac, 157. 
Pope, Alexander, 74, 79, 80, 81. 
Porter, WTlliam Sidney (O. Henry), 

207. 

Prairie, The, 167. 

Pre-Raphaelite Movement, The, 138. 
Prescott, William Hickling, 184. 
Pride and Prejudice, 120. 
Prisoner of Chillon, The, 107. 
Problem, The, 171. 



INDEX 



215 



Professor at the Breakfast Tabic, 
192. 

Prometheus Unbound, 104. 
Puritans, 153. 
Purloined Letter, The, 167. 

Quarterly Review, The, 81, 111. 

Radcliffe, Mrs. Ann, 95, 109, 
164. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 45. 
Ralph Roister Doister, 48, 57. 
Rambler, The, 81, 84. 
Rape of the Lock, The, 80. 
Rasselas, 85. 
Raven, The, 175. 
Realism, 119-125. 
Real Thing, The, 206. 
Reeve, Clara, 95. 

Reflections on the French Revolution, 

Burke's, 86. 
Religio Medici, 67. 

R cliques of Ancient English Poetry, 
95. 

Renaissance, The, 41-61. 
Reply to Hayne (Webster's), 176. 
Representative Men, 181. 
Resignation, 172. 
Retaliation, 79. 
Reveries of a Bachelor, 198. 
Rhymes of Childhood, 191. 
Richardson, Samuel, 88, 109. 
Riley, James Whitcomb, 190. 
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The, 101. 
Ring and the Book, The, 137. 
Ripley, George, 181. 
Rip Van Winkle, 166, 201. 
Rise of Silas Lapham, The, 194. 
Rise of the Dutch Republic, The, 185. 
Rivals, The, 77. 
Robin Hood, 21, 35, 95. 
Robinson Crusoe, 87. 
Roe, Edward Payson, 195. 
Romance, 15-21, 94. 
Romanticism, 93, 116. 
Romaunt of the Rose, The, 28. 
Romeo and Juliet, 55. 
Romola, 123. 
Rossetti, D. G., 138. 



The, I Rudder Grange, 196. 

Ruskin, John, 130-131. 

Salmagundi, 165. 
Samson Agonistes, 69. 
Sartor Resartus, 118. 
Saul, 137. 
! Scarlet Letter, The, 169. 
I Scholar in a Republic, The, 197. 
! School for Scandal, The, 77. 
Schoolmistress, The, 93. 
Science, 125. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 95, 105, 109, 167. 
Sea-farer, The, 5. 
Seasons, The, 96. 
Seneca, 39, 50, 58. 
Sense and Sensibility, 120. 
Seton-Thompson, Ernest, 198. 
Seven Lamps of Architecture, 130. 
Sewall, Samuel, 155, 174. 
| Seward, William Henry, 180. 
Shakespeare, William, 20, 54-57, 74, 

75, 85, 111. 
Shaw, Henry W. (Josh Billings), 
196. 

Shelley, P. B., 97, 104, 105, 107, 110, 
113. 

Shenstone, William, 93. 
Shepherd's Calendar, 44. 
Sheridan, R. B., 77. 
Short Sixes, 204. 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 44, 45, 47. 
Silas Maimer, 123. 
Silent Woman, The, 58-59. 
Sill, Edward Rowland, 190. 
Sir Charles Grandison, 88. 
Sir Patrick Spence, 23, 95. 
Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, The, 
82, 87. 

Skeleton in Armor, The, 172. 
Sketch Book, The, 165. 
Slave Ship, The, 174. 
Smith, F. Hopkinson, 196. 
Smith, Goldwin, 198. 
Smith, John, 154. 
| Smollett, Tobias, 89. 
Snow Bound, 174. 
Snow Image, The, 168. 
Snow Storm, The, 172. 



216 



INDEX 



Society and Solitude, 181. 
Songs of the Sierras, 190. 
Songs of the Sunland, 190. 
Southey, Robert, 108. 
Spanish Tragedy, The, 50. 
Spectator, The, 74, 81, 87, 91, 165, 
200. 

Spenser, Edmund, 20, 44, 45, 74, 93. 
Spenserian Stanza, The, 46. 
Sphinx, The, 171. 
Spy, The, 167. 

Star-Spangled Banner, The, 170. 
Steele, Richard, 76, 82. 
Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 189, 
198. 

Sterne, Laurence, 89. 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 115, 139, 
167. 

Stockton, Frank R., 196, 204. 
Stoddard, Richard Henry, 188, 189. 
Stones of Venice, 130. 
Stops of Various Quills, 193. 
Story of the Glittering Plain, The, 
139. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 169-70. 

Study Windows, My, 198. 

Summary View of the Rights of British 

America, 163. 
Sumner, Charles, 179. 
Surrey, Earl of, 43. 
Swift, Jonathan, 82, 88. 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 20, 

139-141. 

Tale of the Tub, The, 83. 

Tales of a Wayside Inn, 173. 

Tamburlaine, 52. 

Tanglewood Tales, 169. 

Task, The, 96. 

Tatler, The, 81, 82, 87. 

Taylor, James Bayard, 188, 189. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 66. 

Tennyson, Alfred, 17, 20, 115, 132, 

133, 134-135. 
Tenth Muse, The, 160. 
Terence, 39, 48. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 115, 

120-123. 
Thanatopsis, 170. 



Thanet, Octave, 207. 

Thomas, Edith M., 191. 

Thomson, James, 94, 96, 99. 

Thompson, Maurice, 198. 

Thoreau, Henry David, 181, 182-3. 

Threnody, 172. 

Timrod, Henry, 189. 

Tintern Abbey, 99. 

To a Waterfowl, 171: 

Tom Jones, 88. 

TotteVs Miscellany , 43. 

Tour of the Prairies, A, 166. 

Tragedy, 57. 

Tragic Muse, The, 194. 

Transcendentalism, 180. 

Treasure Island, 140. 

Tristram Shandy, 89. 

Trowbridge, John Townsend, 195. 

Trumbull, John, 160. 

Twain, Mark (S. L. Clemens), 196, 

197, 204. 
Twelfth Night, 55, 57. 
Twice-Told Tales, 168. 
Two Admirals, The, 167. 
Two Years before the Mast, 193. 
Tyndale, William, 43. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 169. 
Unto this Last, 131. 

Van Dyke, Henry, 207. 
Vanity Fair, 122. 
Venetian Life, 193. 
Venice Preserved, 76. 
Vicar of Wakefield, The, 90. 
Victorian Poets, The, 198. 
Vignettes of Manhattan, 205. 
Virginia, General History of, 154. 
Vision of Sir Launfal, The, 173. 
Voices of the Night, 172. 

Walden, 183. 
Wallace, Lew, 197. 
Waller, Edmund, 80. 
Walton, Isaac, 67. 

Ward, Artemus (Charles Farrer 

Browne), 196. 
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 195. 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 198. 



INDEX 



217 



Warton, Joseph, 91, 94. 

Warton, Thomas, 91, 94. 

Way of the World, The, 76. 

Webster, Daniel, 174, 176-8, 197. 

Webster, John, 60. 

Week on the Concord and Merrimac 

Rivers, A, 183. 
Wharton, Edith, 207. 
What was It; A Mystery, 203. 
White, Andrew D., 198. 
Whitman, Walt, 187-8. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 174-5, 

187, 189. 
Widsith, 5. 
Wieland, 165. 

Wigglesworth, Michael, 160. 
Wild Honey-suckle, The, 161. 
Wilkins-Freeman, Mary E., 195, 
205. 

Wilson, John (Christopher North), 
111. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 198. 



Wing and Wing, 167. 

Wings of the Dove, The, 194. 

Winsor, Justin, 198. 

Winthrop, John, 155. 

Wister, Owen, 207. 

With Trumpet and Drum, 191. 

Wonder Book, The, 169. 

Woodberry, George Edmund, 191. 

Wood-Notes, 172. 

Woodworth, Samuel, 170. 

Woolman, John, 156. 

Wordsworth, William, 98-99, 100, 

101, 103, 104, 110, 111, 113, 118, 

129. 

World of Chance, The, 194. 
Wreck of the Hesperus, The, 172. 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 43. 
Wycherley, William, 76. 
Wyclif, John, 27, 30, 43. 

Yankee in Canada, A, 183. 
Young, Edward, 94. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



'""THE following pages contain advertisements of a 
few of the Macmillan books of kindred interest 



TISDEL'S STUDIES IN LITERATURE 



Cloth, 12mo, Illustrated 333 pages, $.90 



A book that unifies and vitalizes the study of secondary 
school literature. In Part I " Types of Literature" more 
than twenty different classics are studied and grouped under 
the sub-topics : The Epic ; The Romance and the Novel ; 
The Drama ; The Essay ; The Public Address ; Narrative 
and Lyric Poetry. There is a brief introductory discussion 
of each classic, followed by skillful suggestions for study 
including questions and topics for essays and reports. 
Part II is a brief survey in 156 pages of the chief British 
authors and their work. 

The spirit of the book as a whole is that not of scholar- 
ship merely, but of keen sympathetic appreciation and 
enjoyment of literature. The following letters are typical 
of many that reach us from teachers who are using Tisdel's 
" Studies in Literature " with success. 



" I have never before seen any book that offered such efficient 
help in the English work of our senior year — work which con- 
sists largely of a review of the college entrance readings. The 
comments and questions throughout seem admirable and the 
way in which this very miscellaneous material is systematized and 
coordinated specially appeals to me." 

— H. A. Wilder, Philadelphia High School for Girls. 

" Tisdel's ' Studies in Literature ' is positively fascinating to 
me. The author has all the choicest things of the best authors 
so effectively and interestingly compiled. I am delighted with 
the helps and references in connection with the Classics — such 
a time saver to teacher and student. There is no book I have 
ever read that I think so well adapted to freshman and sophmore 
students." — Miss May Overs tree t, Enid, Oklahoma, 



TISDEL'S STUDIES IN LITERATURE 



" I have looked over the text pretty thoroughly, and am de- 
lighted with it. The historical part of the literature as treated 
in the latter half of the book is just what I have always wanted 
- — brief (touching only the high and important points, leaving 
the rest to be supplemented by the teacher more or less fully 
according to the caliber of the class) and interestingly written. 
The first part of the book I like even better than the last ; it ex- 
ceeds any of my fondest hopes for a high school text. There is 
so much excellent material in it that the teacher has plenty of lati- 
tude in his choice, and the material is so well organized that the 
student cannot go wrong in his private study, even under a poor 
teacher. The arrangement of the book as a whole, too, is very 
pleasing in all ways. Though there are not many pictures, what 
there are, are very, very good." 

— Miss Edith Miller, Columbia, Mo. 

"Your Tisdel's 'Studies in Literature' has proved its right 
to a wide circulation in all strong secondary schools. I have 
been trying it out in the fourth year class and find it the only 
text of its kind that suggests to the student the big, splendid side 
of literature. I like it particularly for its development of themes, 
and its careful, yet not over-minute analysis of orations. Instead 
of killing the beauty of poetry as do some handbooks, it suggests 
those lines of thought that leave the student to discover for him- 
self the joy of true literary study. I heartily commend it." 

— Miss Lora Linn Garrison, Chickasha, Okla. 

"I have examined Tisdel's £ Studies in Literature ' with pleas- 
ure. It seems to me that the work will supply a long-felt need, 
not only with inexperienced teachers, but with the very busy 
ones who do not have time for tedious planning for the system- 
atic work which must be done in the study of literature. I shall 
recommend its adoption in the high school here." 

— C. S. Fulb right, Victoria, Texas. 

" I have made a careful examination of Tisdel's ' Studies in 
Literature ' and freely state that it is positively the finest 
thing in its line I have ever seen. As a book suitable to place 
in the hands of high school literature classes it is absolutely un- 
surpassed. The method of treatment is sane and safe — the pupil 
is led to do his own thinking and draw his own deductions, the 
book making only necessary suggestions." 

— Miss Phcebe L. Finley, Warren, Pa. 



TISDEL'S STUDIES IN LITERATURE 



" 1 should like to have every student of the senior elass own a 
copy of the book." — Miss Ada S. Davis, Portland, Maine. 

tk When Dr. Tisdel comes to the study of a particular piece of 
fiction, his notes and questions are admirably adapted to build 
up an understanding and pleasurable appreciation of the piece 
. . . ' The Survey of English Literature/ Part II, meets with 
my heartiest approval. It is brief, considers all the writers Jhigh 
school students need to know, touches the interesting features 
in the lives and works of these men — about all you could want 
it to do." — E. A. Cross, Greeley, Colo. 

" I have been using 1 Studies in Literature ' in an American 
literature class and I find the questions on the contents illumi- 
nating, and those on form and style equally good. I am con- 
vinced that this book will lighten the English teacher's burden 
and help the student to an appreciative understanding of our 
great literature." — Miss Elsie Creed, Cleveland, Okla. 

" The book seems to me clear in its purpose and comprehen- 
sive in scope. The notes on the various literary types and the 
classics grouped under each, would undoubtedly be a very sug- 
gestive aid to the student. 

" The illustrations are attractive, some of them particularly 
beautiful ; on the whole I like the book very much and can 
speak of its merits with enthusiasm." 

— Mary Frances Browne 11, San Pedro, California. 

" I am very much pleased with the book as a text for the tenth 
and eleventh grades. It is the kind of a book I have been ex- 
pecting for some time." — Raymond L. Brown, Ardmore, Okla. 

" I am tardy in sending to you my appreciation of ' Studies in 
Literature ' by Tisdel. 1 wish to assure you, however, that since 
the book arrived, I have used it both in class and out of class 
and have found it a most valuable aid to the study of literature. 
I commend particularly the chapter upon the essay." 

— Miss Alice Z. Atwood, We lies ley Hills, Mass. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 
BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 



M ACMILL AN'S POCKET 



CLASSICS SERIES 

Uniformly 25 cents the book 

This well-known Series includes over 150 volumes suit- 
able for classroom, reading circle or library. 

Edited in most cases by teachers experienced in teaching 
English in secondary schools, and in all cases by people 
familiar with high school needs, they are ideal books for 
the high school course. 

Among the titles in the Series will be found the master- 
pieces of the language. 

The text of each classic has received special attention, 
and the editing is marked by sound scholarship and judg- 
ment. The notes are suggestive and helpful. 

The little books are well printed on good paper ; they 
are firmly bound in serviceable brown cloth ; and in every 
sense of the word the workmanship of the Series is 
excellent. 

The price is right. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 
BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA DALLAS SAN FRANCISCO 



